NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 22a0505n.06 Case No. 21-3739 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Dec 07, 2022 DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) OUMAR AMADOU CISSE, ) Petitioner, ON PETITION FOR REVIEW ) FROM THE UNITED STATES ) v. BOARD OF IMMIGRATION ) APPEALS ) MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, ) OPINION Respondent. ) ) Before: LARSEN, DAVIS, and MATHIS, Circuit Judges. DAVIS, Circuit Judge. After an Immigration Judge denied Oumar Amadou Cisse asylum and related relief in 2010 and ordered him removed from the country, he sought to reopen his case eight years later based on changed country conditions. Because the Board of Immigration Appeals did not abuse its discretion in denying Cisse’s motion to reopen, we DENY the petition for review. I. Cisse was born in Mauritania in 1972 and is of Black African descent from the Soninke minority ethnic group. He entered the United States without proper admission in February 2003 using identification documents that did not belong to him. Cisse applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) claiming that he suffered persecution in Mauritania on account of his race. More specifically, Cisse averred that he was imprisoned because of his status as a member of an ethnic minority group and that members of his family were arrested and killed by the government on that basis as well. Cisse asserted that he No. 21-3739, Cisse v. Garland feared similar persecution if he were to return to his home country. However, following a hearing in 2010, an Immigration Judge found that Cisse was not a credible witness due to “significant inconsistencies” in his testimony. The Immigration Judge also noted that Cisse’s fears of future persecution were “not consistent with known country conditions” in Mauritania at the time of the merits hearing. As a result, the Immigration Judge denied Cisse’s application for relief on all grounds and ordered his release to Mauritania. The Board affirmed in 2013. Cisse did not petition this court for review. In October 2018, Cisse moved the Board to reopen his case due to “changed country conditions” in Mauritania pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(7)(C)(ii).1 He alleged that the Mauritanian government implemented a discriminatory “census registration process” in 2011, which stripped him and other Black Mauritanians of their citizenship. According to Cisse, Mauritanian officials affirmatively “refused to recognize his citizenship.” Cisse thus claimed that he was “a stateless individual.” He attached fifteen exhibits to his motion to reopen. These included a personal declaration, two expert declarations, the U.S. Department of State’s 2017 Human Rights Report on Mauritania (the “2017 Report”), and various other news articles and reports about the conditions in Mauritania. Notably, Cisse filed no evidence objectively showing that the Mauritanian government revoked his citizenship as he claimed. The Board ultimately denied his motion to reopen the removal proceedings in December 2018. It explained that the facts underlying Cisse’s motion did not demonstrate the requisite “materially changed circumstances or 1 Motions to …
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