Muhur v. Ashcroft, 02-3597.
| Decision Date | 20 January 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-3597.,02-3597. |
| Parties | Yordanos MUHUR, Petitioner, v. John ASHCROFT, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Herbert A. Igbanugo (argued), Riddhi Jani, Blackwell Igbanugo, Minneapolis, MN, for Petitioner.
George P. Katsivalis, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the District Counsel, Chicago, IL, John C. Cunningham (argued), Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Before FLAUM, Chief Judge, and POSNER and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Yordanos Muhur asks us to set aside the order that she be removed (deported) from this country. The order followed the denial of her request for asylum. She presented evidence intended to establish the following facts. She was born to a Christian family in Eritrea in 1974, at a time when it was a province of Ethiopia, though of course it later became and remains an independent country. When she was about 17 she moved with her family to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She became a Jehovah's Witness in 1992, Five years later she married a Muslim Ethiopian who converted to the Jehovah's Witness faith to marry her, and they were married in the Kingdom Hall (the name the Witnesses give to their house of worship) in Addis Ababa. Her husband's family strongly disapproved of his marrying a Jehovah's Witness.
He had business dealings in Saudi Arabia and moved there with her shortly after their marriage. His being a Jehovah's Witness in Saudi Arabia was awkward — to say the least, since under Islamic law it is a capital offense for a Muslim to convert to another religion. So he resumed Islam and browbeat his wife to abandon her faith and behave like a Muslim wife. Instead of bowing to his wishes she came to the United States on a visitor's visa (her family had already immigrated to this country) and once here applied for asylum.
According to evidence that the immigration service has not challenged, Eritrea persecutes Jehovah's Witnesses. U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor, Eritrea: International Religious Freedom Report 2002 (Oct. 7, 2002), http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2002/13820.htm; International Religious Freedom Report; Jehovah's Witnesses — Eritrea (2003), http://www. jwmedia.org/region/africa_middle_east/ eritrea/english/human_rights/e_eritrea _irf2003.htm; International Coalition for Religious Freedom, Religious Freedom World Report (June 3, 2002), http://www.religiousfreedom. com/wrpt/africa/eritrea.htm. It is true that in Tesfu v. Ashcroft, 322 F.3d 477 (7th Cir.2003), we upheld a contrary finding by the Board of Immigration Appeals. But we based our ruling on the evidence in that case, and Muhur is not bound by findings of fact made in a case to which she was not a party. The government does not argue that Tesfu controls the outcome of this case — it doesn't even cite Tesfu.
Ethiopia does not discriminate against Jehovah's Witnesses, and Muhur has Ethiopian citizenship. But in the wake of its recent war with Eritrea, it continues to discriminate against individuals of Eritrean ethnicity. U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2002: Ethiopia (Mar. 31, 2003), http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18 203pf.htm; "Split by a Pointless War: Despite Peace, Ethiopia's Border with Eritrea Is Still Closed," The Economist, Sept. 21, 2002, p. 45. So at any rate the immigration judge noted in this case, as we'll see, though the situation may be improving. U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor, Ethiopia: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2002, supra. Muhur is afraid that if she is returned to Ethiopia she will quickly be deported to Eritrea, where she would not be able to practice her religion openly.
The immigration judge rejected Muhur's claim and ordered her removed to Ethiopia, or, if Ethiopia won't take her, to Eritrea, where he believes she would not be persecuted because she is not an "active" Jehovah's Witness or, as he put it elsewhere in his opinion, a "religious zealot." The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed without opinion.
The government defends the immigration judge's decision on the ground that he found that Muhur is not a Jehovah's Witness. If that were so and the finding were supported by substantial evidence, her case for asylum would collapse, because as near as we can make out she is complaining of discrimination by Ethiopia against ethnic Eritreans only insofar as it will result in her being sent back to Eritrea, either because Ethiopia will not take her back or if it does will promptly deport her to Eritrea. Nor has she shown that such discrimination would amount to persecution. No matter; all that is relevant is that the removal order is likely to cause her to end up in Eritrea, which persecutes Jehovah's Witnesses.
The immigration judge did not make a finding that Muhur's claim to be a Jehovah's Witness is a fabrication, although a note of skepticism sounds throughout his opinion. He pointed out that an "asylum officer" of the immigration service, who first interviewed Muhur, thought she had fabricated her claim to be a Jehovah's Witness because she couldn't answer the officer's questions "concerning the founder of the Jehovah's Witness faith and the days of religious celebration." But the government acknowledged at the hearing that the asylum officer's opinion was not evidence, because she did not testify or submit an affidavit. The immigration judge concluded that Muhur was not an "active, visible" adherent to the Jehovah's Witness faith, because she presented "very little documentary evidence," "only indicated that she prays with friends and occasionally attends a particular prayer place," and "presented no evidence from a leader of the Jehovah's Witness faith that was able to identify [her] as a...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Kazemzadeh v. U.S. Atty. Gen.
...Circuit that having to practice religion underground to avoid punishment is itself a form of persecution. See Muhur v. Ashcroft, 355 F.3d 958, 960-61 (7th Cir. 2004) (Posner, J.). We have recognized that "the [Immigration and Nationality Act] and related regulations ... do not require appli......
-
Diallo v. Ashcroft
...is basically credible; however, his testimony is not inherently persuasive.' We do not understand what this means."); Muhur v. Ashcroft, 355 F.3d 958, 961 (7th Cir.2004) (failure to make a credibility determination regarding whether petitioner was or was not a Jehovah's Witness requires rem......
-
Fessehaye v. Gonzales
...of conversion than reasonably can be expected, especially in the absence of a finding that the alien is not credible, Muhur v. Ashcroft, 355 F.3d 958, 960 (7th Cir.2004) (noting that many authentic believers, including members of churches with more structure than Jehovah's Witnesses, would ......
-
Ghebrehiwot v. Attorney General of U.S.
...He cites Fessehaye v. Gonzales 414 F.3d 746 (7th Cir.2005), Ghebremedhin v. Ashcroft, 385 F.3d 1116 (7th Cir.2004), and Muhur v. Ashcroft, 355 F.3d 958 (7th Cir.2004). However, these cases involved persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, not Pentecostals. The Eritrean government persecutes Jeho......
-
Social Media and Online Persecution
...online harm as persecutory, that choice is a normative judgment, not an application of an immutable, legal rule. 344. Muhur v. Ashcroft, 355 F.3d 958, 961 (7th Cir. 2004) (Posner, J.); see also Kazemzadeh v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 577 F.3d 1341, 1354 (11th Cir. 2009) (citing to Muhur, 355 F.3d at......