Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03421/USCOURTS-ca8-03-03421-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
John Ashcroft
Respondent
Marjeta Lloli
Petitioner
Jani Strato
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 03-3421

___________

Jani Strato, *

*

Petitioner, *

*

v. *

*

John Ashcroft, United States *

Attorney General, *

*

Respondent. * Petition for Review of an 

______________________ * Order of the Board of

* Immigration Appeals.

Marjeta Lloli, *

*

Petitioner, *

*

v. *

*

John Ashcroft, United States *

Attorney General, *

*

Respondent. *

___________

Submitted: September 17, 2004

Filed: November 12, 2004

___________

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The Honorable Richard S. Arnold died on September 23, 2004. This opinion

is being filed by the remaining judges of the panel pursuant to 8th Cir. Rule 47E.

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Before WOLLMAN, RICHARD S. ARNOLD,1

 and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

___________

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Jani Strato and Marjeta Lloli petition for review of the Board of Immigration

Appeals’s (BIA) denial of their motion to reopen proceedings in relation to their

applications for asylum, withholding of removal and protection under the Convention

Against Torture. We affirm.

I.

Strato and Lloli were born in the same Albanian province and are part of the

Greek minority in Albania. They came to the United States from Greece in December

1998 on visitor visas to attend a cousin’s wedding, but remained beyond their

authorized stay. They received notices to appear before immigration authorities in

December 1999. They admitted deportability, but applied for asylum, withholding

of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.

At a consolidated hearing, the immigration judge (IJ) heard testimony from

Strato, Lloli, and Kosta Lalo, a man from the same village in Albania who had

received withholding of removal in an immigration court in New York. Strato

testified that he was born into an anti-communist, Orthodox Christian family that was

forced to work on government farms. In 1988, Strato served in the Albanian army for

two years. He testified that he was mistreated and imprisoned during and

immediately following his army service. Strato soon escaped to Greece. Although

the Communist government was overthrown in Albania in 1991, Strato stated that the

power structure did not actually change. Strato married Lloli in Greece on January

26, 1993, where, unable to obtain lawful status, they both lived underground. During

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the years they lived in Greece, Strato and Lloli briefly returned to Albania in 1993

and 1997. In 1993, they had to return immediately to Greece because Albanian police

recognized and chased Strato. In 1997, Strato returned to participate in elections as

a supporter of the Human Rights Party, but fled once again because he did not feel

safe.

Lalo then testified that he knew Strato. He stated that when the communists

controlled the country, anti-communists and Orthodox Christians were mistreated,

and that after communism, the government still mistreated the Greek minority. When

Lalo began to testify about the details of his experience seeking asylum in the United

States, however, the IJ questioned the relevance of the testimony and sustained an

objection by the Agency. The IJ explained that Lalo’s testimony was relevant only

to show a pattern of mistreatment in Albania similar to that claimed by Strato; it was

not relevant to show that the mistreatment warranted a grant of asylum for Strato

merely because Lalo had been granted withholding of removal. App. 106-09.

Strato’s attorney objected to the IJ’s reasoning, but questioned Lalo no further.

The IJ issued an oral decision denying Strato and Lloli asylum, withholding,

and relief under the Convention Against Torture, and directing their removal to

Albania. He found their testimony credible, though poorly documented. He

concluded, however, that the evidence is not sufficient to establish past persecution.

He found the limited details of Strato’s prison camp experience insufficient to

establish persecution. He also found that Strato’s extended stay in Greece resulted

in de facto resettlement, even though Strato did not achieve legal status. He noted

that the State Department Report indicated tolerance for religious freedom and that

other reports described significant corruption, but overall found little corroborative

evidence in support of Strato and Lloli’s claim that they were persecuted because of

their ethnicity and religion.

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This section was renumbered in 2003; its prior citation was 8 C.F.R. § 3.1.

See 68 Fed. Reg. 9830-9832 (Feb. 28, 2003).

-4-

Strato appealed to the BIA, arguing, among other things, that the IJ violated

Strato’s due process rights when he barred further testimony from Lalo. The BIA

affirmed without opinion in accordance with 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(4) (2003)2

 on April

2, 2003. Strato’s counsel then filed a motion to reopen on June 30, 2003, contending

that the BIA’s decision to issue an affirmance without opinion indicated that it had

failed to consider that Strato’s constitutional rights were violated when the IJ

excluded material testimony. The BIA denied the motion on September 2, 2003,

concluding that:

The respondent has failed to present any new evidence and the evidence

now presented regarding the witnesses testimony does not overcome the

deficiencies in the respondent’s original case or establish his prima facie

eligibility for relief.

II.

We review the BIA’s decision to deny the motion to reopen for abuse of

discretion. Raffington v. INS, 340 F.3d 720, 722-23 (8th Cir. 2003). Because Strato

and Lloli failed to timely appeal the initial BIA decision, and because a motion to

reopen or reconsider does not toll the time for appeal of the underlying order, we

review only the order denying the subsequent motion to reopen. See Boudaguian v.

Ashcroft, 376 F.3d 825, 827 (8th Cir. 2004). Motions to reopen “are disfavored

because of the strong public interest in bringing litigation to a close.” Raffington,

340 F.3d at 722. The Attorney General has broad discretion in deciding whether to

grant or deny the motion. Khalaj v. Cole, 46 F.3d 828, 834 (8th Cir. 1995). The

regulation governing motions to reopen states that:

A motion to reopen proceedings shall state the new facts that will be

proven at a hearing to be held if the motion is granted and shall be

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supported by affidavits or other evidentiary material. . . . A motion to

reopen proceedings shall not be granted unless it appears to the Board

that evidence sought to be offered is material and was not available and

could not have been discovered or presented at the former hearing.

8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(1) (2003). The BIA may properly deny a motion to reopen if the

movants have failed to establish a prima facie case for the substantive relief they seek

or if the movants have failed to introduce material evidence that was previously

unavailable. See INS v. Abudu, 485 U.S. 94, 104-05 (1988). 

In this case, the BIA denied the motion because it did not present any new

evidence. Strato and Lloli argue that because Lalo was not permitted to testify about

his asylum application in New York, his testimony regarding that matter would

constitute “new evidence” in a rehearing. We find no merit in this contention. New

facts presented in a motion to reopen must be facts that were not available and had

not been discovered at the time of the hearing before the IJ. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(1).

Here, the specific facts forming the basis of Strato and Lloli’s motion remained

unspoken at the hearing, not because the facts were unavailable for presentation, but

because the IJ excluded them on relevancy grounds. Strato and Lloli’s argument is

therefore more properly characterized as a legal argument that the available evidence

was improperly excluded. In fact, the motion merely restates the legal argument

advanced in the original appeal to the BIA, i.e., that the IJ’s choice to exclude further

testimony by Lalo resulted in a deprivation of due process.

Claims that the BIA made errors of fact or law are properly raised in a motion

to reconsider, not a motion to reopen. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(b)(1). The BIA has

sometimes treated a motion to reopen as one to reconsider and to reopen, see

Boudaguian, 376 F.3d at 827, but did not do so in this case. A petitioner must file a

motion to reconsider within thirty days of the initial BIA decision, 8 C.F.R.

§ 1003.2(b)(2), but has ninety days to file a motion to reopen. 8 C.F.R.

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§ 1003.2(c)(2). In this case, the motion was filed just prior to the ninety-day deadline,

making a motion to reopen the only available option.

Even if the BIA had treated this motion to reopen as a motion to reconsider,

appellants would not likely have succeeded. The motion merely restated a claim that

they had already argued to the BIA and which the BIA had already rejected. They

then failed to petition this court for review of the original BIA decision. A motion

for reconsideration must “give the tribunal to which it is addressed a reason for

changing its mind,” something the tribunal has no reason to do if the motion “merely

republishes the reasons that had failed to convince the tribunal in the first place.”

Ahmed v. Ashcroft, No. 03-2620, 2004 WL 2382141, at *1-2 (7th Cir. Oct. 26, 2004).

The BIA does not abuse its discretion if it refuses to reconsider the very arguments

it has already rejected. Id. at *2. Because Strato and Lloli made the same argument

regarding Lalo’s testimony twice before the BIA, adding only the suggestion that the

BIA “failed to consider” the argument the first time, the BIA properly disregarded

their claim.

Finally, although the BIA could have denied the motion to reopen solely based

on the lack of new evidence, it indicated a separate grounds for rejecting the motion

by suggesting that such testimony, even if considered “new,” would still fail to

overcome deficiencies in the prima facie case for asylum. See Abudu, 485 U.S. at

104. When new facts are alleged, they must be such that they “would likely change

the result in the case,” or the “heavy burden” required to merit a reopening of

proceedings will not have been met. Matter of Coelho, 20 I&N Dec. 464, 473 (BIA

1992); see also Boudaguian, 376 F.3d at 829. We cannot say that the BIA abused its

discretion by reaching that conclusion and denying the motion to reopen.

The petition for review is denied.

______________________________

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