FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ABDI ASIS ALI ADEN, No. 17-71313 Petitioner, Agency No. v. A208-307-454 ROBERT M. WILKINSON, Acting Attorney General, OPINION Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted November 6, 2019 * Portland, Oregon Filed March 4, 2021 Before: Richard A. Paez and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Circuit Judges, and George H. Wu, ** District Judge. Opinion by Judge Paez; Concurrence by Judge Rawlinson * The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). ** The Honorable George H. Wu, United States District Judge for the Central District of California, sitting by designation. 2 ADEN V. WILKINSON SUMMARY *** Immigration Granting Abdi Ali Asis Aden’s petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ dismissal of his appeal of an Immigration Judge’s denial of his applications for asylum and withholding of removal from Somalia, and remanding, the panel held that the Board erred in concluding that Aden did not qualify for an exception to the firm resettlement bar, and that the evidence compelled the conclusion that he suffered past persecution in Somalia on account of a protected ground. Aden asserted that he suffered persecution in Somalia by members of Al-Shabaab, a militant terrorist organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, after his brother refused their orders to shut down his theater showing American and Hindi movies and sports, which Al-Shabaab viewed as “Satanic” movies. The Board concluded that Aden was ineligible for asylum because he was firmly resettled in South Africa, and that he failed to establish that he suffered past persecution in Somalia on account of a protected ground. The Board noted that Aden presented “ample evidence” of persecution in South Africa, but nonetheless determined that he failed to qualify for the restricted-residence exception to the firm resettlement bar because the persecution he faced was at the hands of private individuals, rather than the South *** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. ADEN V. WILKINSON 3 African government. The panel concluded that the Board erred in doing do, holding that the restricted-residence exception applies when the country’s authorities are unable or unwilling to protect the applicant from persecution by nongovernment actors. The panel held that the evidence compelled the conclusion that Aden suffered past persecution in Somalia, where in addition to physically beating Aden, members of Al-Shabaab kept tabs on him by contacting his brother and warned they would kill Aden and his brother if they continued to disobey Al-Shabaab’s command to close their theater. The panel wrote that the chain of events revealed that Al-Shabaab intended to coerce Aden to submit to its new political and religious order, and used offensive strategies— beatings, destruction of property, and death threats—to achieve this goal. Further, the panel explained that continuing political and social turmoil caused by …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals