Kaur

MEMORANDUM **

Amandeep Kaur petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissing her appeal of an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) decision that denied her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) and ordered her removal to India, her country of citizenship. We conclude that the evidence does not compel the conclusion that Kaur carried her burden of proving either past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution, and so we deny the petition for review. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (a)(42)(A); 8 C.F.R. § 208.13 (a); see also Sangha v. INS, 103 F.3d 1482, 1486 (9th Cir.1997).

An applicant seeking relief from removal “may establish h[er] case through h[er] own testimony alone,” if that testimony provides “credible, direct, and specific evidence” demonstrating her eligibility. Sangha, 103 F.3d at 1487 (internal quotation marks omitted). Although the IJ mentioned credibility concerns regarding Kaur’s testimony, the BIA’s opinion is silent on the issue of credibility. Therefore, we may presume that the BIA found Kaur’s testimony to be truthful. See Krotova v. Gonzales, 416 F.3d 1080,…

I respectfully dissent.

It is impossible to tell from the BIA’s extremely cursory opinion in this case the legal and factual grounds for its decision. In particular, neither the BIA nor the IJ mentioned in their analysis that Kaur testified that the government official who ripped off her blouse was attempting to rape her, so we cannot tell whether and how that evidence was taken into account. On that basis alone, I would remand to the BIA for explicit consideration of the critical attempted rape testimony. See Stoyanov v. INS, 172 F.3d 731, 736 (9th Cir.1999) (“[T]he BIA must provide a reasoned analysis of the legal basis for its holding, specifying as well the particular facts on which that holding relies.”). More specifically:

I agree with the majority that because the BIA was silent on the issue of credibility, we presume that Kaur was credible. See Krotova v. Gonzales, 416 F.3d 1080, 1084 (9th Cir.2005). That presumption means to me that we assume that the police officer actually did attempt to rape Kaur, as that is what she said. Ladha v. INS, 215 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir.2000) (“[W]hen an alien credibly testifies to certain facts, those facts are deemed true.... ”).

Absent…