
    Ricardo ALUMA-LOPEZ, Petitioner, v. Alberto R. GONZALES, Attorney General, Respondent.
    No. 03-74243. Agency No. [ AXX-XXX-XXX ].
    United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
    Argued and Submitted Dec. 6, 2005.
    Decided Dec. 16, 2005.
    Manuel F. Rios, III, Esq., Rios Cantor, PS, Seattle, WA, for Petitioner.
    Regional Counsel, Western Region Immigration & Naturalization Service, Laguna Niguel, CA, Ronald E. Lefevre, Chief Legal Officer, Office of the District Counsel Department of Homeland Security, San Francisco, CA, Allen W. Hausman, Attorney, Papú Sandhu, Esq., U.S. Department of Justice Civil Div./Office of Immigration Lit., Washington, DC, for Respondent.
    Before RYMER and WARDLAW, Circuit Judges, and REED, Senior District Judge.
    
      
       The Honorable Edward C. Reed, Jr., Senior United States District Judge for the District of Nevada, sitting by designation.
    
   MEMORANDUM

Ricardo Aluma-Lopez, a native and citizen of Colombia, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ denial of his application for asylum and withholding of removal. We remand to the BIA.

Aluma’s asylum application was filed after the one-year deadline imposed by 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(B). However, it is not clear that either the IJ or the BIA made a finding on timeliness, and the government does not press the timeliness issue. Given this, we assume that the BIA decision was based on the merits, which is a reviewable ground. See Lanza v. Ashcroft, 389 F.3d 917, 924 (9th Cir.2004).

Neither the IJ nor the BIA addressed whether Aluma, a drug informant for the United States government against a Colombian drug cartel, would suffer persecution on account of an imputed political opinion. The intersection of the United States’s policy toward Colombian drug dealing and imputed political opinions is an unsettled area of immigration law. Thus, we see benefit in having the BIA address in the first instance whether persecution of an informant in this context is on account of an imputed political opinion for purposes of 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A).

REMANDED. 
      
       This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
     