In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 06-4285

HANNA YOUSSEF MEKHAEL,

Petitioner,

v.

MICHAEL B. MUKASEY, Attorney General

of the United States,

Respondent.

____________

Petition to Review an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals.

No. A 76 398 904

____________

SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER 25, 2007—DECIDED NOVEMBER 16, 2007

____________

Before POSNER, KANNE, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The petitioner, a Lebanese citizen, sought asylum and other relief on the ground that

he has a well-founded fear of persecution should he be

returned to Lebanon, because he is a Christian and a

former member of the Southern Lebanese Army, a group

trained and supported by Israel to fight Hezbollah. Following a hearing in July 2005, the immigration judge denied

relief, and the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed

the denial in August 2006. The following month, the

petitioner moved the Board to reopen the proceeding on
2 No. 06-4285

the ground that conditions in Lebanon had changed

materially since his July 2005 hearing, as a result of the

war between Israel and Hezbollah that began on July 12,

2006, while his appeal to the Board was awaiting decision. He also presented evidence that in the aftermath of

the publication in Denmark of cartoons caricaturing

the Prophet Muhammad, violence against Christians in

Lebanon had intensified. The Board denied the motion to

reopen on the ground that the evidence that the petitioner had introduced in support of it merely “details

ongoing problems in Lebanon, and therefore, was

discoverable and available” to the petitioner before

his hearing in July 2005, and that “to the extent that

any specific incidents alleged by the [petitioner] occurred

after that time, they are merely cumulative, and as such,

not persuasive.” This is the Board’s entire discussion of

its grounds for denying the motion. It was not of course

relying on the opinion of the immigration judge; that

opinion had been issued before the change of conditions

in Lebanon upon which the motion to reopen (filed

with the Board) was based.

The Board’s reasoning was remarkable, since the petitioner’s evidence concerned dramatic, portentous events

that had occurred after the administrative record was

closed, and so could not have been discovered before the

July 2005 hearing. The government points out that the

petitioner had described at the hearing tensions between

Muslims and Christians and between Israel and Hezbollah.

But evidence that after the hearing these tensions boiled

over into full-scale warfare and deadly street riots was

no more “cumulative” of the evidence presented at the

hearing than our Civil War was merely “cumulative”

evidence of tensions between North and South that

dated back to the constitutional convention of 1787.
No. 06-4285 3

We have repeatedly reversed the Board when it has

failed to give reasoned consideration to post-hearing

evidence, Gebreeyesus v. Gonzales, 482 F.3d 952, 955 (7th Cir.

2007); Kebe v. Gonzales, 473 F.3d 855 (7th Cir. 2007);

Sosnovskaia v. Gonzales, 421 F.3d 589, 593 (7th Cir. 2005);

Fessehaye v. Gonzales, 414 F.3d 746, 750, 754-55 (7th Cir.

2005); Brucaj v. Ashcroft, 381 F.3d 602, 609-11 (7th Cir.

2004), as have other circuits. Shardar v. Attorney General,

2007 WL 2713029 (3d Cir. Sept. 19, 2007); Chen v. Gonzales,

490 F.3d 180, 184 (2d Cir. 2007) (per curiam); Li v. U.S.

Attorney General., 488 F.3d 1371, 1375 (11th Cir. 2007) (per

curiam); Malty v. Ashcroft, 381 F.3d 942, 945 (9th Cir. 2004).

These decisions require that we vacate the Board’s order

and remand the case for further proceedings consistent

with this opinion. We take no position on the merits of the

motion to reopen. The only ground of our decision is the

Board’s failure to articulate a reasoned response to the

motion. We understand the Board’s staggering workload. But the Department of Justice cannot be permitted

to defeat judicial review by refusing to staff the Immigration Court and the Board of Immigration Appeals with

enough judicial officers to provide reasoned decisions. The

petition for review is granted and the Board’s order

vacated.

A true Copy:

Teste:

 _____________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of 

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—11-16-07