Rodas

MEMORANDUM *

Onelio Abel Lopez Rodas, a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals summarily affirming an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his withholding of removal claim. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We review for substantial evidence, Kozulin v. INS, 218 F.3d 1112, 1115 (9th Cir.2000), and we deny the petition.

Substantial evidence supports the IJ’s denial of withholding of removal because even if petitioner had established past persecution, the presumption of a well-founded fear of future persecution has been rebutted by changed country conditions. Based on the 1997 and 2001 State Department Reports on Guatemala, the IJ found that (1) the civil war between the Guatemalan government and the guerrillas ended in 1996; (2) the guerrillas were demobilized and disbanded at that time; and (3) there has been no evidence of former guerrillas retaliating against former captives. The IJ found that petitioner’s last contact with the guerrillas was in 1992 and that there has been no contact since that time. Because these findings are supported by the record, the IJ properly found that the presumption of a…