Opinion ID: 46218
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dawit's Claim

Text: 30 Dawit's asylum claim is premised on his arrest, detention, and charge for violating Ethiopia's travel laws by smuggling Eritreans. These acts, he asserts, amounted to past persecution on account of his social group and imputed political opinions. In providing parameters for the term persecution, the BIA has stated: 31 While punishment of criminal conduct in itself is not persecution, where that punishment entails such things as severe beatings or being sent to a Nazi concentration camp—i.e., is excessive or arbitrary —and is motivated by one of the specified grounds, such punishment would constitute persecution under [immigration laws]. 32 Abdel-Masieh, 73 F.3d at 584 (quoting Laipenieks, 18 I & N Dec. at 456-57). In this case, the BIA held that Dawit's punishment would be prosecution for a criminal act, not persecution. 33 Based on the record, substantial evidence supports the BIA determination that Dawit did not experience past persecution. Dawit encountered Ethiopian law enforcement three times. First, he was arrested and detained for a month when he and Senait were stopped at the Kenyan border near the beginning of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war, and he was charged with smuggling. The detention was under unpleasant and unduly prolonged but not brutal conditions. Later, he was stopped twice in Addis Ababa and his bag was searched. On neither of these latter occasions, however, could Dawit affirm whether the police were aware of the pending criminal charges or were conducting planned surveillance on him. 34 Not only do these law enforcement encounters fail to rise to the level of physical persecution, compare Abdel-Masieh, 73 F.3d at 584, but it is also unclear whether they were motivated by political or social group animus against Dawit. There is no explanation in the record for his being accosted in Addis Ababa. And as to the smuggling charge, when two countries are at war, it is not invariably persecution for each sovereign to control the travel of persons it believes may harbor sympathy for the enemy or who might flee the country to fight on the other side. The background of Dawit's detention, of course, is the forced deportations and denationalization that both Ethiopia and Eritrea carried out against their resident ethnic minority and that other courts have asked the BIA to evaluate for asylum purposes. See Haile, 421 F.3d at 494-95. Still, there is no direct connection between his criminal charge and the ethnic cleansing, while there is an obvious purpose in a country's enforcement of passport and travel laws during wartime. 35 Dawit argues that he was singled out for prosecution because, when he identified himself as Senait's husband, the authorities knew his political opinions and sought to punish him as a sympathizer with Eritreans. These connections are inferences that the BIA was not required to draw. Dawit's interrogation over the course of his detention seems, on the contrary, to have concerned mundane attributes of smuggling—how many people, how much money—rather than political inquisition. 36 This court recently held that [a]sylum protects victims of persecution on account of belief, not conduct. Mwembie v. Gonzales, 443 F.3d 405, 414 (5th Cir.2006) (citing cases). The line separating belief from conduct may not always be clearly delineated when based on the existence of criminal charges, but here we are not persuaded that Dawit was persecuted on account of his beliefs or his marriage to an Eritrean. 37 It follows that, because Dawit's main expressed fear in returning to Ethiopia is his exposure to the outstanding criminal charge, and that charge is not sufficient to show persecution, he has not established a well-founded fear of future persecution. Further, Dawit does not take issue in his appellate brief with the BIA's observation that it is unclear whether he would face further criminal proceedings on return to Ethiopia for events that happened eight years ago. Dawit has not demonstrated that the evidence he offered was so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution. INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 484-85, 112 S.Ct. 812, 817, 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992).