Opinion ID: 4538683
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ba’s Nationality and Past Enslavement

Text: The BIA concluded that Ba’s motion was not exempt from the statutory bars on motions to reopen because (1) he did not address the IJ’s findings that he was neither Mauritanian nor a slave, and “therefore” (2) he had failed to show that his now-proffered evidence about Mauritania “reflects any materially changed country conditions showing that he is now eligible for relief from removal.” A.R. at 4 (BIA Decision at 2). We address the first link in this syllogism. Assuming that the IJ did, in fact, find that Ba was Senegalese and not Mauritanian, and that he was not a slave,6 it is unclear how Ba’s failure to rebut these findings would foreclose his present motion to reopen, which is based on changed circumstances that have to do with his religion and political beliefs, not his nationality or past enslavement. The BIA’s decision denying Ba’s motion to reopen faulted him for failing to “demonstrate[] the materiality of any of the evidence relating to conditions in Mauritania,” id. (BIA Decision at 2 n.3), but did not acknowledge that regardless of his nationality, the country to which Ba—who is allegedly a Christian and an opponent of 6 Ba makes the additional argument in Part IV of his brief that “the IJ did not ‘find’ [that] Mr. Ba was from Senegal.” Pet. Br. at 22. The government does not directly contest this assertion, but responds that “the record makes clear that the agency did not believe Ba credibly showed that he is Mauritanian.” Resp. Br. at 17. It is true that in order to discredit testimony, the BIA or IJ “must make the determination that a declaration is ‘inherently unbelievable,’” and neither entity did so explicitly here. Trujillo Diaz v. Sessions, 880 F.3d 244, 253 (6th Cir. 2018) (quoting Haftlang v. INS, 790 F.2d 140, 144 n.2 (D.C. Cir. 1986)); see A.R. at 751 (Asylum Hr’g Tr. at 59) (“I believe respondent is Senegalese, quite frankly. Based on his language here today. French. Education.”); id. at 49 (A.R. at 741) (“The Court finds that it is highly unusual that you would have been enslaved from infancy in an Arabic family and be speaking French here today in Court.”); IJ Decision at 7 (A.R. at 677) (finding that statistic about percentage of Mauritanian small-boat fisherman who were Senegalese, Ba’s “unreliable identity records,” and his French fluency “strongly suggest to the Court that he is, in fact, Senegalese”). But see IJ Decision at 6 (A.R. at 686) (“Respondent’s explanation for speaking French . . . is totally incredible.”). But because we resolve Ba’s petition on other grounds, we do not address this argument. 12 No. 19-3859, Ba v. Barr slavery—will be removed is Mauritania, see A.R. at 664 (IJ Order) (“Respondent’s application for voluntary departure was denied and respondent was ordered removed to Mauritania.”), which apparently persecutes Christians and opponents of slavery, see id. at 68–235 (evidence of changed country conditions). Although Ba specifies that he is a “Christian of Afro-Mauritanian descent,” nowhere in his motion to reopen or in his proposed asylum application does he allege that he will be targeted on the basis of his nationality. A.R. at 28 (Third Mot. to Reopen at 5). Put simply, the IJ’s suspicions that Ba was not Mauritanian and had not been enslaved need not be revisited on a motion to reopen in order to assess whether he will be persecuted if removed to Mauritania. Contrary logic would have doomed many of history’s most desperate asylum applicants. For example, a Jewish asylum applicant fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s who both (a) claimed German nationality and (b) failed to convince the Board that he was German would have been removed to Germany, even if it was undisputed that he was Jewish and that the Nazi regime persecuted members of the Jewish faith. Such a result—focusing on disbelieved nationality when nationality itself was irrelevant—would have been “without a rational explanation.” Balani, 669 F.2d at 1161. For Ba, it is his religion and political beliefs, not his nationality—be it Senegalese or Mauritanian—or his past enslavement that allegedly expose him to persecution. The irrelevance of Ba’s alleged nationality and past enslavement to his present motion is even clearer when considering why these things were relevant to his past asylum application. For Ba’s 2000 asylum claim, he was obligated to present a coherent, credible claim of past persecution. The fact that he spoke better French than Arabic “suggest[ed] to the Court that he is, in fact, Senegalese,” IJ Decision at 7, which in turn meant that his claim of past persecution in Mauritania was not credible. See id. at 8 (discussing the “plausibility of his being an educated French-speaking 13 No. 19-3859, Ba v. Barr slave to an Arab master in Kaédi”). In other words, if Ba was lying about being Mauritanian, it was less likely that his claim about being enslaved in Mauritania was true. The same is not true for his present claim. Whereas Ba’s application for relief in 2000 hinged on the plausibility of his backward-looking claim that he had been enslaved in Mauritania, Ba’s present asylum claim hinges on the plausibility of the forward-looking possibility that he will be persecuted in Mauritania.7 Only for the former claim was Ba’s credibility in describing his Mauritanian roots relevant. This is unlike, for example, the scenario we addressed in Ahmed v. Holder, 495 F. App’x 605 (6th Cir. 2012). In Ahmed, the petitioner first failed to testify credibly that he had been targeted for political persecution in Mauritania. Id. at 606–07. Several years later, he filed a motion to reopen his removal proceedings based on new evidence supporting his initial claim of political persecution. Id. at 608. When the BIA denied his motion to reopen, it relied on the prior adverse credibility determination. Id. at 612. We found no error in this reliance, explaining: “While Ahmed’s appeal does not directly challenge the agency’s adverse credibility determination, his motion to reopen is, essentially, a motion to reconsider his credibility: he relies on the same story 7 A change in personal circumstances alone, such as a conversion to Christianity, does not constitute changed country conditions for purposes of 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(3)(ii). See Haddad v. Gonzales, 437 F.3d 515, 517 (6th Cir. 2006); see also 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(7)(C)(ii). But if the petitioner can demonstrate that a change in country conditions would lead to his persecution based on a corresponding change in his own personal circumstances, this is permissible. See Chandra v. Holder, 751 F.3d 1034, 1039 (9th Cir. 2014). “Personal conversion to a group does not foreclose the possibility that a country can ‘for its own reasons, become[ ] more hostile towards an alien or his group’ at the same time.” Yu Yun Zhang v. Holder, 702 F.3d 878, 880 (6th Cir. 2012) (alteration in original) (quoting Tan Wu Zhang v. Holder, 385 F. App’x 546, 547 (6th Cir. 2010)). For reasons discussed above, supra Part III.A, we leave it to the BIA to determine whether Ba has demonstrated either a change in country conditions or a corresponding change in his personal circumstances. 14 No. 19-3859, Ba v. Barr now that he relied upon then, and that story was deemed incredible.” Id. (emphasis added); see also Yan Xia Zhang v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 851, 855 (6th Cir. 2008) (BIA did not abuse its discretion in declining to credit new evidence of China’s population-policy persecution when the petitioner made “no attempt . . . to rehabilitate her credibility” after testifying incredibly, in the initial asylum proceeding, about her persecution under this policy). Here, by contrast, Ba does not rely on the same story, or even the same bases of persecution.8 Alternatively, the government appears to argue that the BIA more generally “rejected Ba’s credibility.” Resp. Br. at 20. It is unclear whether the government means to suggest that apart from the substance of his incredible testimony in the prior asylum hearing, Ba has been found to lack credibility in general. Regardless, in this case, the BIA did not deny Ba’s motion to reopen on the basis that he generally lacked credibility; the BIA’s decision does not regard his motion to reopen or proposed asylum application as inherently unbelievable because of some history of fraudulent conduct. Cf. Gafurova v. Sessions, 712 F. App’x 540, 546 (6th Cir. 2017) (upholding the IJ’s and BIA’s consideration of the petitioner’s prior adverse credibility findings, when “under the circumstances,” she “had a history of providing false statements under oath and of submitting fraudulent documents”); Yan Xia Zhang, 543 F.3d at 852 (IJ deemed “fraudulent” a “written document meant to confirm the forced abortion episode [that] was signed by her father and brother even though the official Chinese household identity card Zhang provided to the court indicated both men had been living in the United States for years prior to the incident”). 8 There is yet another aspect of illogic to the BIA’s consideration of Ba’s nationality: It results in the conclusion that Ba should be removed to Mauritania because he has not demonstrated that he is Mauritanian. See IJ Order (A.R. at 664). 15 No. 19-3859, Ba v. Barr The BIA here did not conclude that, for example, Ba had an established lack of credibility, and that therefore his claim that he converted to Christianity was unbelievable. On this issue, compare Ba’s case to Gafurova, in which the asylum applicant’s motion to reopen based on changed circumstances was denied because “[t]he only evidence that the Respondent attached to her new I-589 to support her contention that she is now Christian is her own affidavit,” and “[d]ue to her history of fabricating information, the Court will give no weight to the Respondent’s affidavit as she has no credibility.” Gafurova A.R. at 46 (IJ Decision at 3) (emphasis added); see also id. at 4–5 (Gafurova BIA Decision at 2–3) (“The respondent also asserts that the Immigration Judge inappropriately prejudged her credibility. However, the Immigration Judge was fairly considering the respondent’s lack of credibility as it has been a continuous issue [in] her proceedings, and the initial adverse credibility finding by the Immigration Judge has been upheld by this Board and the federal court of appeals.”) (emphasis added). In Gafurova, we affirmed the IJ and BIA’s decisions, because they relied on the petitioner’s general lack of credibility. 712 F. App’x at 546. Here, the BIA did not conclude that Ba’s motion to reopen must fail because he generally lacks credibility. Rather, as discussed above, it held that his failure to rebut the prior adverse credibility determination was dispositive because it established that he was not Mauritanian and was not a slave. Absent any indication in the BIA’s decision that it regarded Ba as generally untrustworthy or fraudulent, its reliance on the past, claim-specific credibility determination was “without a rational explanation.” Balani, 669 F.2d at 1161.