Court Opinion

ID: 9496804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:35:40.73397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:48.467652
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
As the majority recognizes, the question before us is whether the Board of Immigration Appeals abused its discretion when it refused to reopen the asylum proceedings for the five members of the Selimi family. It concedes that the Board’s decisions on Mr. and Mrs. Selimis’ motions are “somewhat muddled,” ante at 739, but that is the least of the flaws in those decisions. The Board ignored pertinent facts about the Selimis’ situation and important information in the record. A decision based on such a weak foundation cannot withstand even the deferential review implied by the abuse of discretion standard. I would send this case back to the Board for a serious look at the Selimis’ case.
Under the governing regulations, asylum applicants have an opportunity to file a motion to reopen if they wish to offer evidence that is “material and was not available and could not have been discovered or presented at [a] former hearing.” 8 C.F.R. 1003.2(c)(1). In this case, Aisha Selimi (along with her daughters) filed a *742motion to reopen in April 2001. Her husband Besem Selimi filed a similar motion in June 2001. The Selimis requested reopening because an armed conflict between the Macedonian government and ethnic Albanian rebels had been underway since February 2001. The majority concedes, as it must, that the Selimis had no crystal ball, and thus they could not have known that conditions would degenerate in this way at the time of their immigration proceedings in 1994 and 1995.
I have no quarrel with the proposition that the Board of Immigration Appeals exercises broad discretion in deciding whether to grant a motion to reopen. INS v. Abudu, 485 U.S. 94, 104, 108 S.Ct. 904, 99 L.Ed.2d 90 (1988). This discretion, however, is not absolute. As this court has explained, the Board’s decision to deny a motion to reopen need only be reasoned; it does not have to be compelling or even convincing. Achacoso-Sanchez v. INS, 779 F.2d 1260, 1266 (7th Cir.1985). But we have made it clear that the word “reasoned” means something. Even though the Board does not have to “write an exegesis on every contention,” it must at a minimum consider the issues raised and “announce its decision in terms sufficient to enable a reviewing court to perceive that it has heard and thought and not merely reacted.” Mansour v. INS, 230 F.3d 902, 908 (7th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). This deferential standard does not permit the Board to act “without a rational explanation.” Nwaokolo v. INS, 314 F.3d 303, 307 (7th Cir.2002) (quoting Mansour, 230 F.3d at 907); Achacoso-Sanchez, 779 F.2d at 1265. Here, we have no idea why the Board thought that the materially changed country conditions in Macedonia in 2001 had no bearing on the Selimis’ asylum applications: it was silent on the point. For all that the record shows, it entirely failed to consider the Selimis’ new evidence in reaching its decision to deny relief.
Although Macedonia avoided being drawn into the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts between 1991-1995, its location next to the southern Serbian province of Koso-vo and the close link between the ethnic Albanian populations in Macedonia and Serbia made it virtually inevitable that Macedonia would be affected by the 1998 ethnic conflict in Kosovo. Indeed, the State Department Report for 2000 acknowledges a growing resentment between the Macedonian police and ethnic Albanian citizens'. See State Department Country Report for 2000 at § l.a. (describing the deaths of two ethnic Albanians in policy custody). The majority seems to think that the Selimis’ decision to submit the 2000 State Department report for the Board’s consideration somehow undermines their claims surrounding the events in 2001. See ante at 740. But the 2000 report provides important context for what happened next in Macedonia, in early 2001; taken together, the two reports show what a significant turn for the worse took place.
Tensions in Macedonia boiled over in early 2001, when the emergence of an ethnic Albanian insurgent group known as the National Liberation Army (NLA) led to months of armed conflict between government forces and NLA rebels. Most of this fighting took place in NLA strongholds located in northwestern Macedonia, a region bordering the Selimis’ hometown of Kieevo. The record indicates that when the fighting was at its heaviest, between February and August 2001, there were credible reports of serious human rights violations committed by government forces against ethnic Albanian civilians. Those atrocities were not limited to NLA insurgents and pro-Albanian activists, as the majority suggests. Besem’s affidavit in support of his motion to reopen explained *743that he feared torture by Macedonian forces who were “taking ethnic Albanian males who are not supportive of the rebels to police stations, heating them until the men ‘confess’ about their participation in the National Liberation Army or to extract information about the rebels.” Besem A.R. at 18. He alleged that he had “every reason to fear that ... as an ethnic Albanian male, [he would] be subject to this type of torture to extract information .... ” Id. The State Department Country Report for 2001 confirms that Besem had good reason to be concerned. It states that during the conflict, “police beatings of ethnie-Albanian males were common and frequently were conducted with implements such as wooden bats, batons, iron bars, and steel cables; such beatings occasionally resulted in the death of victims. Police forced detainees to sign confessions under torture implicating themselves and others in NLA-related activities.” State Department Country Report for 2001 at § l.c. The report does not indicate that this treatment was directed only at Albanian rebels and activists. To the contrary, it describes numerous incidents of abuse targeted at ethnic Albanian civilians exactly like the Selimis. It was on the basis of these conditions that the Selimis filed their motions to reopen in April and June 2001.
As I have already noted, the Board gave no indication that it considered these circumstances. With respect to Be-sem’s motion to reopen, the Board denied relief because Besem “was never arrested, detained, or otherwise bothered by the authorities in Macedonia except on one occasion his house was searched for an unknown reason. The applicant has visited Macedonia in the past with no adverse consequences.” That is a breathtakingly unresponsive comment in the face of a changed circumstances petition. Every one of the events the Board mentions occurred long before 2001; they are wholly irrelevant to an analysis of changed country conditions caused by the 2001 armed conflict between government and NLA forces. In Aisha’s case, the Board found that she had failed to make a prima facie case for relief because the evidence simply showed that “conditions in Macedonia and surrounding areas are certainly volatile and subject to civil strife.” Unlike the State Department, the Board seems not to have realized that what occurred in 2001 was far more severe than mere civil unrest. This conflict pitted armed minority rebels against government-backed forces, with ethnic Albanian civilians caught in the crossfire.
The Board did not offer even the outline of a reasoned explanation for why the actual circumstances in Macedonia did not justify permitting the Selimis to reopen their petition. In my opinion, this failure requires us to vacate the Board’s decision. See Nwaokolo, 314 F.3d at 310 (finding that the Board had failed to indicate that it had considered all of the material facts and circumstances). Furthermore, the Board’s lack of consideration of the changed country conditions fatally undermines its conclusion that Besem and Aisha cannot make a prima facie showing for asylum relief. The Selimis presented evidence to show that the heaviest fighting occurred near their village. Had the Selimis lived in southern or eastern Macedonia, for example, their claims may have been weaker. But maybe not: the record further suggests that ordinary ethnic Albanian civilians may have been subject to abuses as government forces went after NLA rebels. I note that at oral argument the Selimis’ attorney stated that when she took the family to immigration officials for removal on April 9, 2001, she was informed that all deportations to Macedonia were on hold as a result of the fighting. On remand, the Board would have to decide whether the *744Selimis have demonstrated a well-founded fear of future persecution in light of these and other facts describing the situation in Macedonia during 2001.
The majority hints (ante at 740) that it is concerned about a floodgates phenomenon: if the Selimis are entitled to asylum, why would the rest of the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia (some 30% of the population) not also qualify? The answer, I believe, is that these cases must be evaluated one at a time, in accordance with the criteria for asylum that Congress has established. In fact, despite the upheavals in that country, it appears that only a trickle of claims have been presented. Macedonians filed 111 asylum applications in 2001 and 76 applications in 2002, and there is no reason to believe that all of these applicants were ethnic Albanians. See IMMIGRATION and NATURALIZATION SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF JuSTICE, 2001 STATISTICAL YEARBOOK OF THE Immigration and Naturalization Servioe 102 • (2003), available at http://us-cis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/ Yearbook2001.pdf; Office of Immigration STATISTICS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, 2002 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 29 (2003), available at http://us-cis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/ Yearbook2002.pdf. These filings represent 0.16%, or less than two-tenths of one percent, of all asylum cases filed in this period. Id. Many people are attached to their homes and would not leave no matter how bad things got; others do not have the resources to leave their country; and still others try and fail before the authorities in the United States and other destinations. The Board, and we, must decide the Selim-is’ case in accordance with the law. If Congress decides that the United States has become too welcoming for asylum applicants, it is free to make whatever changes it desires, legislating against the backdrop of the international obligations of the United States in this area. See Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch (6 U.S.) 64, 118, 2 L.Ed. 208 (1804).
I would remand this case for the Board to consider more carefully the Selimis’ claim that they are entitled to have their applications for asylum reopened in light of changed country circumstances. We have explained that, “[a]s a non-factfinding body (and without foreign policy expertise), we are ill-equipped to determine whether significant changes may have occurred ... and the degree to which those changes may affect [an] application for asylum.” Sivaainkaran v. INS, 972 F.2d 161, 166 (7th Cir.1992). Whatever conclusion the Board might ultimately reach, it first must consider the evidence presented by the Selimis describing the events that occurred in 2001. Because the Board did not do so, I respectfully dissent from the decision denying their petition for review.