Ahmed v. Wilkinson
| Decision Date | 09 February 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-2165,19-2165 |
| Parties | DJILLALI AHMED, Petitioner, v. MONTY WILKINSON, Acting Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
Before DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals.
This petition for review concerns the denial of Djillali Ahmed's second motion to reopen his (very protracted) immigration proceedings. An Algerian who fled thecountry in 1999 after serving in its military and state police forces, Ahmed argues that his removal proceedings must be reopened because of changed circumstances there—namely, an escalating conflict between Algeria's security forces and Islamic militants, and a death threat targeting him that was sent to his family's home.1 But because Ahmed failed to supply evidence demonstrating his prima facie eligibility for asylum, we must deny his petition.
Ahmed, now 49 years old, testified that he came to this country out of concern that terrorist organizations in Algeria had targeted him for harm because of his role in the anti-terrorist operations of the Algerian government's security forces. He served in the Algerian army in the early 1990s; during that stint he spent 10 months guarding a jail that housed captured Islamic terrorists. In 1994, he joined the Algerian state police force and was assigned to airport security, a dangerous job that included scanning for bombs and contraband. At that time, Ahmed testified, police officers were being killed daily by Islamic militants. Ahmed resigned in 1996 after Islamic militants ambushed a group of fellow officers. On one occasion, someone shot at Ahmed while he was visiting his sick father. In early 1999, he smuggled himself into this country by hiding aboard a petroleum ship bound for Boston.
Ahmed soon was placed in removal proceedings. He conceded removability but applied for asylum based on his membership in a particular social group—Algeria's police and security forces. An immigration judge denied his application, concluding that he could not show past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution, since he had not pointed to anything distinct from the occupational hazards that went along with his prior security jobs.
Ahmed then appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. While that appeal was pending, he moved to remand his proceedings so that he could adjust his status to reflect his selection in the 2001 Diversity Immigration Visa Program.
The Board denied that motion, because Ahmed did not meet the statutory requirements for adjustment of status under 8 U.S.C. § 1255(i). In the same order, the Board upheld the denial of his application for immigration relief. The Board agreed with the immigration judge that the dangers faced by police officers stemmed from the nature of the job and Algeria's volatile political situation rather than from anystatutorily protected ground (including Ahmed's proposed membership in a particular social group). The Board also found that Ahmed had not developed any argument based on fear of future harm, given that he did not experience persecution in the two years he spent in Algeria after leaving the police force, and he had not shown that the Algerian government was unable to protect its officers from persecution by private actors.
Ahmed then petitioned for review, but we denied relief. See Ahmed v. Ashcroft, 348 F.3d 611 (7th Cir. 2003). We concluded that Ahmed, who had evaded harm by moving from place to place in the desert, failed to demonstrate past persecution because none of the events he described involved harm or threats of harm to him. Id. at 616. As for his fear of future persecution, we ruled that he failed to meet the demanding standard of presenting specific, detailed facts showing that he had a good reason to fear being singled out for persecution. Id. at 618.
In the meantime, Ahmed had filed his first motion to reopen his proceedings based on changed country conditions. He argued that widespread violence in Algeria had escalated in the aftermath of a presidential amnesty decree that failed to resolve the conflict between the Algerian government and the Islamic fundamentalists. The Board denied the motion, concluding that an increase in generalized violence did not "necessarily translate into the specific targeting of former police officers."
Fast forward fifteen years: In 2018, Ahmed filed a second motion to reopen the proceedings, alleging changed circumstances in Algeria based on new evidence. That new evidence included a letter from Ahmed's brother noting the death of two of his colleagues (without a reference date), enclosing recent news articles about the continuing conflict between Algerian security forces and Islamic militants, and forwarding a 2018 letter purportedly sent by the "Sharia Branch of the Islamic Group of Jihad" to his family's home in Algeria, threatening him with death.2 According toAhmed, this evidence demonstrated that no amount of vigilance or government protection would stop the Islamic militants from killing him.
The Board denied the motion on May 20, 2019. It concluded that the news articles did not reflect materially changed country conditions in Algeria but instead depicted only an "ongoing" conflict between the country's security forces and terrorist groups. Ahmed's motion, the Board added, failed to include evidence demonstrating that the government was unable or unwilling to protect him. Lastly, the Board determined that Ahmed failed to demonstrate prima facie eligibility for asylum, as required by 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(3)(ii), and therefore did not demonstrate that the new evidence would likely change the result in this case. Ahmed filed a timely petition for review of the May 20 decision on June 18, 2019.
In February 2020, Ahmed filed a third motion to reopen, in which he tried to cure some of the deficiencies of his second motion by including a letter from an Algerian government official stating that the government will not be able to protect him from terrorists. The Board promptly denied this motion because, among other reasons, the additional statements did not establish that the conflicts between police and terrorists had worsened. Ahmed did not petition for review from this decision.
At the outset, we must clarify which of the Board's several decisions is the subject of this petition for review. Ahmed asserts in his Statement of Jurisdiction that he seeks review of the Board's February 2020 order denying his third motion to reopen but writes in his Statement of the Case that he seeks review of the Board's May 2019 order. The government correctly notes, however, that the 2020 order (along with the related materials) is not properly before us, because Ahmed did not petition for review from that order. The timely filing of a petition for review is a jurisdictional requirement, see Stone v. INS, 514 U.S. 386, 405 (1995), and Ahmed therefore needed to file separate petitions for review of each of the Board's final orders that he wished to challenge. Youkhana v. Gonzales, 460 F.3d 927, 933-34 (7th Cir. 2006); see also Lavery v. Barr, 943 F.3d 272, 275 (5th Cir. 2019) (). He did not, with respect to the February 2020 order, and so we have no more to say about it.
Ahmed's petition nonetheless can be read to challenge the Board's denial of his second motion to reopen. This court reviews the Board's denial of a motion to reopen for abuse of discretion. Meriyu v. Barr, 950 F.3d 503, 507 (7th Cir. 2020). His argument essentially is that the Board erred by failing to consider whether the 2018 death threat, which his family received at his address in Algeria, could establish materially changed circumstances. According to Ahmed, the fact that the Islamic Group of Jihad issued a death threat toward him showed that there is an ...
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