Opinion ID: 166405
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Ms. Niang's Claims

Text: 58 As previously explained, if Ms. Niang can establish that she has suffered persecution on account of her membership in a social group, she may be a refugee eligible for asylum and she may be presumptively entitled to a restriction on removal. The IJ, affirmed by the BIA, rejected her claim of past persecution, however, because he found incredible her account of how she suffered FGM. We will not set aside such a credibility determination if the IJ . . . give[s] specific, cogent reasons for an adverse credibility finding that are not based on speculation or conjecture. Wiransane, 366 F.3d 889, 897-898 (10th Cir.2004). The IJ and BIA sufficiently supported the credibility determination here. 59 But Ms. Niang's claim of past persecution does not depend entirely on her account of the attack by her family. She has made the broader claim that she suffered FGM on account of her being a female member of the Tukulor Fulani tribe. It is undisputed that she suffered FGM, and the injuries described by Dr. Wilson — her scarring, inability to engage in normal sexual relations, and inability to bear children naturally — would certainly be sufficiently serious to qualify her FGM as persecution. It is also undisputed that she is a female Tukulor Fulani, and the IJ did not appear to question that the custom of the tribe is to perform FGM on its female members. The State Department Report on Female Genital Mutilation reports that about 20% of Senegalese women have undergone the mutilation and lists the Toucouleur tribe as one of the specific ethnic groups that practice the ritual. R. at 326. The IJ apparently believed Ms. Niang's statements that all her sisters had undergone the genital mutilation at a younger age, because he used that information to discredit her testimony that her family performed the FGM when she was 25. 60 Yet neither the IJ nor the BIA addressed this broader claim. We therefore must remand for further proceedings to resolve it. If the BIA determines that she did suffer persecution in the form of FGM as the result of her tribal membership, it would next need to address whether the persecution was committed by the government or forces the government is either unable or unwilling to control. Berishaj, 378 F.3d at 323. If the BIA finds this third element of refugee status, Ms. Niang is a refugee, and she is also entitled to a presumption for asylum purposes that she has a well-founded fear of future harm on account of her social group and a presumption for restriction-on-removal purposes that she will be persecuted in her home country on account of her social group. The BIA would therefore need to determine on remand whether the presumptions have been overcome.
61 In contrast to the presumptions applicable in asylum and restriction-on-removal proceedings, under the CAT a petitioner is not entitled to a presumption of future torture based on evidence of past torture; nor does a showing of past torture automatically render her CAT eligible. Although past torture is a relevant consideration for the IJ in assessing the likelihood of future torture, 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(3)(i), it is only one factor in the assessment. Here, our review of Ms. Niang's CAT claim is controlled by the permissible finding that she is untruthful. See Wiransane, 366 F.3d at 897-98. Once one discredits Ms. Niang's description of her family's attack on her and the threats of future harm from her family, one could rationally decide that she had failed to show that if she returned to Senegal she would be killed or otherwise subjected to torture. We therefore affirm the BIA's rejection of this claim.