Adel Gebra v. Attorney General United States


NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT __________ No. 21-2957 __________ ADEL RAGEIB GEBRA, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA __________ On Appeal from the Board of Immigration Appeals Immigration Judge: Eugene Pugliese (Agency No. A070-576-786) __________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on September 20, 2022 Before: AMBRO1, RESTREPO, FUENTES, Circuit Judges (Filed: July 19, 2023) __________ OPINION* __________ 1 Judge Ambro took senior status on February 6, 2023. * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. RESTREPO, Circuit Judge. In a case that spans 30 years, Adel Rageib Gebra, an asylum applicant, appeals the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) denial of his third motion to reopen after an ad- verse credibility determination. Because we conclude that the BIA abused its discretion in holding that Gebra’s third motion to reopen did not present a new claim that was inde- pendent from the one previously found not credible and by ignoring certain arguments when comparing the evidence of changed country conditions, we grant the petition for re- view. I. JURISDICTION The BIA had jurisdiction to review the motion to reopen pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c). This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(6). Gebra timely filed his petition for review on October 22, 2021, within 30 days of the BIA’s decision on September 30, 2021. Id. § 1252(b)(1). Venue is proper in this Court since the immigra- tion court proceedings occurred within this Circuit in Newark, New Jersey. Id. § 1252(b)(2). II. SUMMARY OF THE ISSUES This appeal presents two controlling issues: whether the BIA abused its discretion by (1) failing to meaningfully compare the country conditions in 1998, at the time of his asylum hearing, with those in 2019, at the time Gebra filed his third motion to reopen; and (2) by ruling that Gebra did not present a new claim independent of the one previ- ously found not credible. 2 III. STANDARDS OF REVIEW We review the BIA’s denial of a motion to reopen under the highly deferential abuse-of-discretion standard. Kucana v. Holder, 558 U.S. 233, 242 (2010); INS v. Ab- udu, 485 U.S. 94, 107 (1988). We uphold the BIA’s factual determinations if they are “supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole.” INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481 (1992). IV. STATEMENT OF FACTS Petitioner, Adel Rageib Gebra, is a native and citizen of Egypt. He is a Coptic Christian, a religious minority in Egypt targeted for conversion by Islamic Fundamental- ists. According to Gebra, he was active in the Coptic community in Egypt and was the victim of multiple attacks from Islamic Fundamentalists due to his unwillingness to con- vert to Islam. He fled these attacks and entered the United States on or about November 15, 1992, on a non-immigrant visitor visa. Gebra filed for asylum in 1993, claiming that he suffered past persecution and had a …

Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals