on the four corners of its decision as a specific matter it is about the b a s failure to announce its decision in turn sufficient to enable this honorable court to review how it came to its conclusions further its about the unexplained departure from its own contemporaneous decisions now in nearly identical cases and on a more macro level this is about to be ira's chronic history of failing to meaningfully review the record and provide extraordinary measure for the rd circuit to instruct the or any circuit court to instruct the board to act in a certain way other than to review the record or review it with so  perhaps requesting a grant was a bit of an overreach on my my my part and perhaps wishful thinking but the fact of the matter is i would request that this court rematch and with instruction to properly review the record and properly articulate as to why evidence in favor of the petitioner was not sufficient to establish a change in country conditions i would also a accept for the board to explain in a cogent explanation as to why they have granted to my count nineteen motions to reopen based on chinese christians in the past year and  denials in this in this case i have been researching on published decisions on this matter for the past year i have not found any that have been denied with the exception of this one further in the uk but let's talk about the fact that there's two components to asylum is reasonable likelihood of persecution that is are ok joe you have putting let's assume there's been a change country condition what is your evidence to show that it's a really reasonable likelihood that this christian in indonesia including a robbery that he believes was incited by the fact that he is a chinese christian resulted in a serious injury and the nd being that he was a nd poverty that he was kind of issue but i understood your honor it would be a pattern in practice of persecution of chinese christians within within indonesia which would this court would have to which would require we should a showing at a trial on asylum infected your error as described as a failure to fully engage with the record and explain why certain evidence did not support your client's view infected the prima facia analysis that's correct your honor this court has found in and i believe it's goes without saying on was that the with the question of whether or not it's reviewed the evidence whether or not it has articulated why evidence in favor of the petitioner was rejected or turned away a threshold matter you don't know i don't believe we get to the prima fashion eligibility without st reviewing the record as to whether or not there are changed circumstances in indonesia but given that they would be i a s decision is largely devoid of any anything but conclusory statements that this is ongoing i don't believe that we can then do an analysis as to whether or not he has met his prima basher duty or prima fashion of burden of showing whether or not at a trial he could prove pattern and practice of persecution the b i am its decision says that it  true that the petitioner has a heavy burden to warrant reopening but this court has found that there is a heightened duty to explicitly consider any country condition evidence submitted by the applicant that metairie materially bears on a change in country conditions and and if there is evidence within the record that supports the petitioners claim that there is a change in country conditions this court has found that the b i a must explicitly explain why that cited only seven of its thirty some exhibits and in doing so they failed to address many of the same pieces of evidence that i have submitted in the petitioners breed why did the evidence which shows a rising increasing growing gaining worsening conditions in indonesia for for christians why did that evidence not meet  petitions for reopening it in forgive me i'm i'm missing that those legal catchphrase that associates and so now the question becomes you're looking at our precedent and you're saying well what degree of what i'll call show your work is needed by the b i it now if the if the b i a e a says you know we've looked at everything and this is our answer that's better than saying this is our answer but it's not as good as saying an itemized look of all fifty four exhibits and how they move how they move the dial and so then we run into this cherie problem which is respond kind of takes and maybe fills in a little of the show your work requirement that you say the b i didn't do but she never doesn't say we can only affirm based on express thank you very much your honor st i'll note that in liam they stated that even if the b i a reached the correct conclusion its failure to explain why the evidence did not show materially change conditions constitutes an abuse of discretion the what the b i a is is bound to do what they must do before either or is at least provided a decision that's reviewable the the government's brief parses out the record  d and attempts to show evidence that supports the b i l s conclusion but the government respectfully is not the b i a we cannot make assumptions about what the b i e did they simply state yeah we reviewed everything but it it didn't it didn't cut the mustard if i can speak locally well there's a heightened burden based this court has said that in these types of motions to reopen there is a heightened burden for them to review the record and explain why evidence in favor of the petitioner does not does not support their claim here there's there's no such analysis by the b well so let me just let me just let me just tease this out well i would say no your honor because while that brief while the government's brief explains evidence against the petitioner it does not explain the volumes of evidence in favor of the petitioner and why they have dismissed that evidence which is a requirement of their analysis so there's certainly if you if you dig through the record there is certainly evidence supporting bole standards but at the b i a is it's an appellate court that has a duty to uphold due process and they can't simply issue blanket statements and conclusion and decisions which essentially amount to a couple conclusory statements and say too bad i'm sorry and they certainly can't do that when it contemporaneously they've approved nineteen such motions and in doing so in in departing from their contemporaneous decisions they must provide some  why they've done that and they haven't done so in this case and it i've provided those i provided seventeen decisions because i submitted my brief in july there are two such decisions that have come since then that i've become aware of and in some of those decisions are two sentences long some of those including suporn putra which this case has a presidential decision involving to go to catholic petitioners they simply say the says look he was here in two thousand and four he's back here in two thousand and nineteen he's provided reports from two thousand and fifteen through two thousand and nineteen but we compare that to what was produced in two thousand and four and it's really a continuation of the same kind of alleged persecution of chinese christians in indonesia nothing has changed you know this is not a situation and plus it did it could be i did indicated it looked at the exhibits i mean what more do they have much more detail do they have to get into on a comparative your honor i'm glad you asked that question to this point importantly you know the board must evaluate motions to reopen in their totality based on the specific country i indonesia indonesia undoubtedly has a long history that spans decades if not longer of i'm going to scream a nation and violence towards chinese christians at some points in their history that rises to persecution at some point it does not so when you review a motion for change country conditions based on change when you review a motion to reopen based on change country conditions in the context of indonesia it's a nuanced and detailed factual inquiry you're looking for evidence that shows that it has gone from discriminatory to now persecution which is a much smaller jump than say in a thought in that respect is i'll put this really simply it was really bad in over four or in the late ninety's leading to kind of over four decision it it that conditions in indonesia got one level though change country conditions in a motion to reopen context you're looking at the original proceeding so if the original proceeding was two thousand and thirteen when things were not so bad you have a pretty good case that it's it's worse now than two thousand and thirteen but your reply brief indicates it was really really bad in four so don't so at one level i mean i guess isn't the be i only trying to say our comparison isn't changed country conditions based on last year or the intervening fifteen years of good it's at the time of the proceeding and what we've  and so why can't they just summarily say we've looked at all your evidence you haven't comes from the last few years now there's a massive uptick in the last two years to backlash that's that's good evidence had the hearing bend in the last few years but your original hearing was  i don't know and respectfully i don't know that my brief says that things were bad enough or i believe it says that there was a large uptick in one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight which read led to the display and a lot of the cases being granted but i believe it was around two thousand and four that this corps in levy found that there was not a pattern in practice and that things were actually getting better in indonesia the two thousand and four evidence in that was submitted in the record shows that there has been improvements in the human rights and in the religious harmony of indonesia two thousand and four i believe was several years a few years into the the betterment of the conditions  the the conditions becoming less worse i think when you compare the can the country conditions to now especially in the past two thousand and sixteen to present they are continually getting worse and they're doing so as i as i was making my point earlier they're doing so in and maybe not a way when you look at it you say oh my goodness there's a civil war going on now they're doing so in a nuanced way but nonetheless a very very serious way so i guess my question is though how much attention does that let's say that some of your exhibits say things are dramatically worse now than they were in two thousand and six told how much how much attention to c b i have to get that piece of evidence when we're looking at a change condition from to write a in a decision that reflects how they came to their conclusions without providing a simple conclusory statement you know again in in the cases that are on point here in the cases having to do with a three man for failure to meaningfully review the record and articulate the decisions there they are cases where the this court finds that the b ira did in fact review five sixty seven pieces of evidence but left out many many other pieces of evidence in their decision in this case they really if they cite to no cases based make a general conclusory statement we've reviewed everything and we're sorry about that it doesn't it doesn't meet the standard and they do that while contemporaneously approving many other cases including the same board member who made this decision has since approved cases and it counts let me just ask judge fisher if he has any a party for the attorney general good morning counsel side as was discussed earlier the order is unlike tonight petitioners motion for two reasons i'm going to take the reverse order actually it was the order that  judge for it you kind of took counsel to any way the st issue bank that he has failed to establish prima fascia eligibility for relief and independently he felt was that was materially changed country conditions in indonesia since two thousand  four judge shorts if i may you kind of took counsel there quite and talking about prima fascia i was really we talked about the merits of the case as we point out in the brief petition are has waived any challenge to the merits didn't discuss that and in his opening it only talked about the merits but again that issue is not before the court where only as far as prima fascia eligibility goes the only argument that petitioner raised in his opening brief is that they believe the board improperly required him to conclusively show that he did not meet the requirements for asylum and related relief but as we point out in the brief and i don't want to rehash too much but if you look at the st page of the board's decision it specifically notes with respect to prima fascia eligibility that petitioner was only required to show that he was likely or that the evidence that he submit it was likely to change the results and then the court and then the board went on to find to the extent that petitioner slowly argued that there was a pattern or practice of religious persecution in the case it's found that no you do and establish that so two things judge st as far as the th decisions the petitioner attached to the reply brief i don't know what the other thirteen decisions are that he references as far as the six none of them before was whether there were any cases that held to the ops are similar to what the board has done in this case and i don't want to do the whole namedropping thing but i believe judge schwartz and just so it's you know well the case that i cited and  answering brief that was your case that was decided back i believe april of this year and also involved the chinese creation in the end and the board in that case just as in this one file that petitioner simply had an establishment terrio change based fourteen but as compared to the time that petitioner had filed this motion but they if anything that under that i would believe helps our point that conditions at the time there was a point where i believe the president and indonesia that back and ninety eight hour who ended at the time was who are to was somewhat of a dictatorial president at the time and then there was that area from like the th circuit points out in the marriott decision that we saw in the br where from the late ninety's to the early two thousand which would include the time frame for partition or prior hearings where conditions were were particularly bad in the country and then there was a time period i know this court had a decision  twenty thousand and eighty one decision w o n g eight where it found that conditions had in fact improved mainly during the later half of that decade and going into the next d into the twenty ten's and so when you look almost as a matter of law that conditions had changed any points to the nineteen where all look where the board found all these cases where conditions had changed the liam court never finds that conditions had change sense that petitioners married terry at the time was two thousand and three as judge fitz said that was a particularly bad time in the country's history what the liam court does is looks at the twenty six dollars exhibits that petitioner cited and just as petitioner does on page fourteen of his brief it looks at words like increasing worsening phipps said it's not necessarily required to go through and tabulate i believe fifty one country conditions exhibits that petition are submitted and this case and then you have also where just to know that the why his case was factually dissimilar from those cases so you clearly see unlike the decision and i did look at the decision and the board's decision and layout you have a lot more in this case they specifically suggest that the or did in fact consider  all of his evidence and you have to give the board a presumption of regularity that it did what it was supposed to particularly in this case where it specifically cited to the decision for the proposition that it was required to consider all of his evidence and as judge  believe fisher mentioned earlier why does the board need to go through i mean from what i gather from petitioner's arguments is he expects that the boarders going to do like the court this court did l fifty one country conditions documents that he submitted and an effort to just say ok well we think that this you know compare and contrast everything but i'm not  and my brief i go through just as the th circuit does in the mary decision i look at the evidence that petitioner himself submitted including the two thousand and three countries for the two thousand and four country for d h s i believe submitted the four in the  five country ports and i do what the courts have said the border is required to do and what the board did do in this case looked at the evidence at the time it knows from prior decisions that at that time from the late ninety's to the early two thousand that it was a particularly bad time in the country and then it looks at the conditions now and says yes conditions are still bad so perhaps if the conditions were perhaps on the ten back at the time and as judge phipps mention conditions got less bad maybe they dropped to a five and it just seems particularly if you look at some of the evidence that i don't know if it's particularly related to to the president who's there now but the evidence that that description of submitted and liam submit it seems to suggest that there's been a riot and or a worsening of conditions in the country simply sense president joke a widow took office in late october th for some reason that seems to be the time frame that they specifically comment on a dish will happen once where should perhaps be the be at the reverse to say because so much time has elapsed it's not necessary for us to go through each and every submission because maybe there's some wave or maybe there's some latches here that's that comes into play and i'm trying to look at this from the position that the b i a could find themself in  moving forward with not just indonesian cases but other cases where people been around you know that magical twelve million that everybody cites who knows what that number isn't in war but seems like a lot of find fit in this category and we need to be careful what we say here because the workload for the b and i could be increased significantly if we say the wrong thing well i mean i can tell you from personal experience the workload of the b i has greatly increased and times and i think that's looking at the decision the board is saying that especially over here as you're aware i think many of these indonesian cases and i don't mean to be flippant but they're coming back around in recent years as many of these people are being picked up and as you mentioned there is there was what a fourteen year gap between two thousand and four  this is more recent time frame i can imagine that if there were people who had filed motions back and they planted fifteen or fourteen earlier timeframes things like that you may have seen a point where as judge phipps pointed out where yes conditions versus that time frame versus now you would have seen a big difference but the conditions are basically as most back to where they were back in and the early two thousand thank you thank you very much your honor respectfully i would like to correct mr hardy i don't think that he missed misspoke on purpose the petitioner in this case was never picked up by immigration or ice he simply filed this motion to reopen out of his own genuine fear there's nothing that forced his hand in doing so the government makes the argument that a lot of these have come because there has been a increase in the enforcement of immigration policy laws against indonesians who were previously ordered removed that maybe so but it coincides with the fact that the  these motions to reopen these motions to reopen which the b i a says in this court acknowledges are highly display a very and they're granting them because they have found a change in country conditions they're not cited to but not not not i mean i don't i i do not want to even begin to pretend to know each one of those d d decisions at a level that you or your opposing counsel do but are all of those comparing apples to apples it goes as far as maybe two thousand and nine i believe and i there in the record in the end they do state the timeframe in those decisions but none of them reach the same conclusion with cases where they were you and that's a threshold matter so in getting you know if you get to the fact that it's arbitrary because it departs without explanation i don't even think we get to the question of change country conditions i don't think we get to the question of prima fashion eligibility and we don't get to the question of review properly reviewing the record with your adversary that you've waved the premise they should challenge or do you think that that sentence that he read to us was fishing to preserve i do believe that i preserve the pro then i don't have to specifically attack the more nuanced findings of that decision compliment that fitzgerald further questions of counsel i know pay your bill a time has expired but i thank you behalf of the panel and we thank both the house for a very helpful argument and being with us under these unusual times and we wish you guys to be safe in your families to be healthy and your friends as well