Opinion
No. 13-70662
08-18-2016
JORGE D. MERCADO, aka Jorge David Mercado, Petitioner, v. LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General, Respondent.
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
Agency No. A094-181-976 MEMORANDUM On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued December 11, 2015; Resubmitted August 9, 2016 San Francisco, California Before: GRABER and WARDLAW, Circuit Judges, and MARQUEZ, District Judge.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
The Honorable Rosemary Marquez, United States District Judge for the District of Arizona, sitting by designation. --------
Petitioner Jorge David Mercado, a native and citizen of El Salvador, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' ("BIA") decision dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge's decision denying his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture. When Petitioner applied for asylum in 1995, he was a minor child whose mother had been granted asylum. The child of an alien who is granted asylum under 8 U.S.C. § 1158 "may, if not otherwise eligible for asylum under this section, be granted the same status as the alien if accompanying, or following to join, such alien." 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(3)(A). The government failed to process Petitioner's asylum application until 2009, by which time Petitioner had reached the age of 21 and married. We remand on an open record for the BIA to consider whether Petitioner was entitled to derivative asylum pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(3), or otherwise, when he applied for asylum in 1995, and whether he should be granted asylum nunc pro tunc to that time. Because we remand for the BIA to consider whether Petitioner should be granted asylum nunc pro tunc, we do not reach the other issues raised in Petitioner's Petition for Review.
PETITION FOR REVIEW GRANTED; REMANDED.