IYABO WILLIAMS, AKA Iyabode Olatokunbo Naborne-Bankole v. LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
IYABO WILLIAMS, AKA Iyabode
Olatokunbo Naborne-Bankole,
Petitioner,
v.
LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General,
Respondent.
No. 12-71571
Agency No. A040-392-119
MEMORANDUM*
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Argued and Submitted October 22, 2015
San Francisco, California
Before: PAEZ, MURGUIA, and HURWITZ, Circuit Judges.
Iyabo Williams petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’
(“BIA”) order denying her motion to reopen removal proceedings. Because the
BIA acted contrary to law, we hold that it abused its discretion and grant
Williams’s petition for review.
FILED
NOV 10 2015
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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1. The BIA’s order, although unclear,1 appears to reject Williams’s claim to
changed circumstances because threats she received in 2010 were not qualitatively
different than all previous threats, including threats that she continued to receive
until 1997 or 1998. The BIA’s disposition therefore contravenes the applicable
regulation, which requires a determination of whether Williams’s evidence is
qualitatively different from evidence available at the time of her 1993 merits
hearing. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(3)(ii); see also Malty v. Ashcroft, 381 F.3d 942, 946
(9th Cir. 2004).
2. The BIA’s disposition is also inconsistent with Chandra v. Holder, 751 F.3d
1034 (9th Cir. 2014), because it discounted threats Williams received in the United
States based on the erroneous premise that “[t]hreats in the United States are not
changed conditions in Nigeria[.]” Although changed personal circumstances alone
are insufficient to support a motion to reopen, they may bear on the materiality of
changed circumstances in Nigeria. See id. at 1036-39.
PETITION GRANTED.
1The government acknowledged that the BIA’s “decision on this issue might
have been more artfully drafted.”
2

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