Olowo v. Ashcroft
| Decision Date | 11 May 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-1362.,03-1362. |
| Citation | 368 F.3d 692 |
| Parties | Esther OLOWO, Petitioner, v. John D. ASHCROFT, United States Attorney General, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Babatunde A. Irukera (Argued), Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.
Terri J. Scadron (Argued), Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, George P. Katsivalis, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the District Counsel, Chicago, IL, Robbin K. Blaya, Department of Justice, Civil Division, Immigration Litigation, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Before CUDAHY, RIPPLE and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.
Esther Olowo is a native and citizen of Nigeria who has lawful permanent resident status in the United States. In 2000, Ms. Olowo went to the Bahamas and tried to reenter the United States with the alien child of a family friend. The Immigration and Naturalization Service charged Ms. Olowo with removability under § 212(a)(6)(E)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA"), see 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(E)(i), for knowingly aiding an alien to enter the United States. An immigration judge ("IJ") found Ms. Olowo removable, and she applied for asylum and withholding of removal on the ground that, if she is returned to Nigeria, her two daughters will be subjected to female genital mutilation. The IJ denied Ms. Olowo's petitions and she appealed both the IJ's finding of removability and the denial of her applications to the Board of Immigration Appeals ("the BIA"). The BIA summarily affirmed the actions of the IJ. Ms. Olowo now petitions for review of the BIA's decision. For the reasons set forth in the following opinion, we deny Ms. Olowo's petition and affirm the decision of the BIA.
Ms. Olowo was living with her family in Chicago when a family friend, Babatunde Ali (who also was living in Chicago at the time), asked her to travel to the Bahamas and to return with his six-year-old daughter, Grace Ali. Joyce Tunde-Ali — Grace's mother and Mr. Ali's ex-wife — had brought Grace to the Bahamas from Nigeria and now wanted Mr. Ali to send money and airline tickets for Grace, herself and Margaret Ogunosun (another Nigerian) so that they could travel to the United States. At Ms. Tunde-Ali's direction, Mr. Ali purchased the tickets in the names of "Batricia Ann Thompson," "Elease Jennings" and "Lillie Harden." Mr. Ali did not trust Ms. Tunde-Ali to deliver Grace to him as they had agreed; the two were not on the best of terms. He therefore asked Ms. Olowo to deliver the tickets and to return with Grace. Mr. Ali bought Ms. Olowo a round-trip plane ticket to Nassau and gave her the three return tickets.
After she arrived in Nassau, Ms. Olowo found Grace and gave her mother the tickets. The next day Ms. Olowo and Grace (along with Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun) returned to the airport and entered inspection before boarding a flight to Chicago. During inspection, Ms. Olowo presented plane tickets, a green card for herself and a birth certificate for Grace bearing the name "Batricia Ann Thompson." When asked by an INS inspector about her relationship to Grace, Ms. Olowo said that she was the child's mother. After initially passing through inspection, Ms. Olowo and Grace were called back because INS inspectors had detained Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun for having fraudulent documents, and the inspectors suspected that all four were traveling together. INS inspector George Haas again questioned Ms. Olowo about her relationship to Grace; this time Ms. Olowo said that she was Grace's "godmother" and explained that she had earlier identified herself as Grace's mother because the two terms were inter-changeable in Nigerian culture. Inspector Haas examined Grace's birth certificate and doubted its authenticity. Nevertheless, because he was not certain that Grace was not a United States citizen, he let both Grace and Ms. Olowo board the plane and deferred inspection until after their arrival in Chicago.
A few months after her return to Chicago, the INS called in Ms. Olowo for questioning, and she gave a sworn statement about her arrangement with Mr. Ali and the inspection that took place at the airport in Nassau. In her statement, she admitted presenting the birth certificate to INS inspectors before attempting to board the plane with Grace and said that the birth certificate was purchased by Mr. Ali. By this time, the INS had determined that the birth certificate was fraudulent, and they issued Ms. Olowo a Notice To Appear on charges that she was removable because she knowingly had aided Grace, Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun in their attempts to enter the United States, a violation of INA § 212(a)(6)(E)(i).
At her removal hearing, Ms. Olowo denied knowing anything about Grace's fraudulent birth certificate. She stated that she was not associated with Ms. Tunde-Ali or Ms. Ogunosun and that she knew nothing about their attempt to enter the United States. She denied telling the INS in her sworn statement that she had presented a fake birth certificate before boarding the plane in Nassau or that the birth certificate had been purchased by Mr. Ali; instead she said she actually had answered, "I don't know," to both questions. She also testified that she went to the Bahamas at Mr. Ali's request because he was awaiting an adjustment of status and could not leave the Country, that Mr. Ali gave her a sealed envelope containing Grace's documents, that she presented the envelope at the airport without examining its contents and that she saw the birth certificate only after INS Inspector Haas questioned its authenticity. Ms. Olowo further stated that she knew very little about Grace before going to the Bahamas to pick her up because Mr. Ali — her husband's close friend — never talked about her.
Testifying by telephone, Inspector Haas stated that he had observed Ms. Olowo enter the Nassau airport inspection hall with Grace and the other two women and that he had seen Ms. Olowo give instructions to them before they separated and went into different inspection lines. Inspector Haas was not Ms. Olowo's primary inspector, but he did inspect Ms. Tunde-Ali, who presented conspicuously fraudulent documents bearing the name "Elease Jennings." At another inspection station, a different INS inspector discovered that Ms. Ogunosun was carrying false documents with the name "Lillie Harden." Because he had seen the group enter the hall together, Inspector Haas had Ms. Olowo and Grace called back to the inspection area for a secondary inspection.
At this secondary inspection, Inspector Haas questioned Ms. Olowo about her relationship to Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun. Ms. Olowo first told him that they had been vacationing together in the Bahamas. Meanwhile, at a different INS inspection station, Ms. Ogunosun broke down under questioning and admitted that she was a Nigerian traveling with false documents and that Ms. Olowo was carrying both her Nigerian passport and Ms. Tunde-Ali's in a carry-on bag. A Bahamian constable then retrieved the passports from Ms. Olowo's luggage, and Ms. Olowo changed her story and claimed that she did not really know the women that well and was traveling with them only because they had met in the Bahamas by chance. She claimed that the passports were in her bag because the other women did not have any carry-on luggage, and they had asked her to carry the documents for them.
Both Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun were detained pending deportation to Nigeria, but Inspector Haas said that he had allowed Ms. Olowo and Grace to board the plane "out of compassion for the child" because he was unsure about her citizenship. A.R. at 308. However, Grace's Nigerian passport was found in the inspection hall lavatory about a month later, confirming Inspector Haas' suspicion that the child was not Ms. Olowo's and also was not a United States citizen.
The IJ found Ms. Olowo removable and designated Nigeria as the country for removal. The IJ found that the INS had presented sufficient circumstantial evidence to show by clear and convincing evidence that Ms. Olowo had knowingly aided Grace to enter the United States and had also aided Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun in their attempts to enter. In reaching his decision, the IJ determined that Ms. Olowo's testimony was not credible because it was "inconsistent, self-serving, vague, and implausible," and that she had "testified falsely in an attempt to mislead the Court." A.R. at 629. Specifically, the IJ found that Ms. Olowo had lied about her lack of familiarity with Grace, her association with Ms. Tunde-Ali and Ms. Ogunosun and her knowledge of Grace's fraudulent birth certificate and that she had falsely represented herself as Grace's mother to INS inspectors. The IJ concluded that Ms. Olowo was not a "mere patsy," id. at 629, but instead an integral part of a scheme to get the three Nigerian nationals into the United States with fraudulent documents:
Even though [Ms. Olowo] denied that she was involved ... it is clear from the record that [she] was involved in a scheme, whereby she knew that the child, the child's mother Joyce, and Margaret were all Nigerian citizens who were traveling with false [U.S.] birth certificates. As to the child, it is reasonable to conclude that [Ms. Olowo] was fully aware that her friend's child was an alien who needed proper documents to enter the [U.S.]. It is also evident that [Ms. Olowo] not only carried the child's travel documents and false birth certificate, but also provided false information and documents to the [INS] in order to assist the child to enter the [U.S.] illegally. As to the other two women, [Ms. Olowo] knew that these women were aliens, because of their friend-ship, and the fact that [she] had in her possession their Nigerian passports while they were presenting false [U.S.] birth certificates...
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