Opinion ID: 176989
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Second Motion to Reopen in 2009

Text: On July 28, 2009, petitioners Boules and Menkarios filed a second motion to reopen. The petitioners argued that they were excused from the time and numeric bars because they had shown changed country conditions in Egypt regarding the government’s unwillingness to protect Coptic Christians. The second motion to reopen alleged new and previously unavailable evidence (1) that in January 2009 an Islamic group had attacked Boules’s law office in Cairo and left a written death threat for Boules and his family and (2) of the extreme and unusual hardship their U.S.-born children faced if their parents were returned to Egypt. The petitioners attached, inter alia: (1) a copy of an undated letter from an unnamed Islamic group threatening Boules and his family with bodily harm and death if they returned to Egypt; (2) a copy of an Egyptian police report indicating that on January 27, 2009, Boules’s law office in Egypt was vandalized by Islamic extremists who had left Boules the threatening letter; (3) an article from the U.S. Copts Association website reporting the April 2009 destruction of the office of a 6 doctor who was an Egyptian union president for human rights; (4) an October 2005 affidavit of Nabil Fahmy Boules, Boules’s brother, stating his belief that his brother would be killed if he returned to Egypt because of the incidents that occurred there in 1990 and 1991; (5) an undated asylum approval letter issued to Nabil Boules; (6) a May 2009 Department of State report stating that the Egyptian “government’s respect for freedoms of the press, association and religion declined in 2008”; (7) 2009 media reports documenting decades of sporadic flare-ups of violence by Muslims against Coptic Christians in Egypt; (8) an October 2005 article from the U.S. Copts Association website about a protest by Muslims outside a Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt that resulted in a riot; (9) a July 2008 letter from Joel Gordon, Professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Arkansas, discussing general conditions in Egypt and between Egyptian Muslims and Copts and expressing his opinion that relocating the petitioners’ children to Egypt would constitute a hardship;4 and (10) March 2007 4 Among other things, Professor Gordon noted that: (1) Alexandria, where the petitioners would reside, has been “a place of recent tensions,” but did not elaborate on this point; (2) “[f]or a variety of reasons,” Egyptian authorities’ response to harassment of Coptic Christians is often negligible; (3) although the threats the petitioners’ children fear, such as kidnapping and forced conversion, are real, they “are not, contrary to their understanding, daily threats to the general Coptic public”, but rather “flashpoints, the kinds of potentially violent encounters that lurk at the edges of extremism at periods of heightened tensions, and in places in which lawless elements have gained a degree of autonomy in delivering and carrying out threats”; and (4) given the recent attack on Boules’s law office, the Boules family may be “caught amidst such troubles,” and the children may face “harassment, intimidation, perhaps violence” in Egypt. 7 psychological evaluations of the petitioners’ children concluding that they would suffer emotional or psychological trauma if they are either separated from their parents or required to move to Egypt with their parents. On February 4, 2010, the BIA denied the petitioners’ second motion to reopen their asylum proceedings as time- and numerically-barred. The BIA found that the petitioners had not shown changed country conditions that would excuse them from the time and number limitations on motions to reopen. Specifically, the BIA found that the petitioners’ evidence showed that mistreatment of Coptic Christians in Egypt has occurred for decades and did not show that conditions for Coptic Christians had materially deteriorated since the removal hearing in February 2008. Additionally, the BIA concluded that the petitioners’ new evidence did not establish a prima facie claim for asylum, withholding of removal or CAT relief. The BIA found that the petitioners’ evidence of the recent ransacking of Boules’s law office in Egypt did not show that the threats and harassment would “escalate to mistreatment of sufficient severity to constitute persecution if they return to Egypt.” The BIA noted that the report of a similar incident at a doctor’s office had not resulted in any physical harm to the doctor, that Boules had not suffered past 8 persecution and that Boules had not shown that he could not relocate to another area in Egypt. As to the petitioners’ request for cancellation of removal, the BIA concluded that the petitioners’ motion to reopen was barred because they failed to file it within the thirty-day voluntary departure deadline, which made them statutorily ineligible for cancellation of removal. See INA § 240B(d)(1)(B), 8 U.S.C. § 1229c(d)(1)(B) (providing that alien who fails to depart voluntarily within the time specified is ineligible for cancellation of removal for ten years). On March 2, 2010, the petitioners filed this petition for review of the BIA’s February 4, 2010 order.