In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17-1416 DUDI A. YAHYA, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals No. A076-773-842. ____________________ SUBMITTED DECEMBER 12, 2017 — DECIDED MAY 3, 2018 ____________________ Before BAUER, RIPPLE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. Dudi Yahya petitions for review of the denial of his motion to reopen removal proceedings that concluded more than fourteen years ago. The Board of Immigration Ap- peals (“Board”) upheld the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) deci- sion to deny his motion to reopen. The Board held that Mr. Yahya did not qualify for one of the exceptions to the 2 No. 17-1416 ninety-day limitation for the filing of a motion to reopen. Mr. Yahya now submits that the Board abused its discretion by rejecting his evidence of changed conditions in Indonesia. Because the Board permissibly concluded that Mr. Yahya did not meet his evidentiary burden, we deny the petition. I BACKGROUND Mr. Yahya entered the United States on a six-month tour- ist visa in either 2000 or 2001 and overstayed. 1 According to Mr. Yahya, in March 2003, he voluntarily appeared to register in the Government’s National Security Entry-Exit Registra- tion System and then was placed in removal proceedings. One month later, he received a notice to appear, charging him as removable because he had overstayed his visa in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B). Five months later, he appeared be- fore an IJ and accepted an order of voluntary departure, but he did not depart. According to Mr. Yahya, he remained in the United States because he did not want to put his eight-month-old, American-born son on a twenty-hour flight to Indonesia. “Before I knew it,” he stated, “the days turned into months, and the months turned into years and … I have not departed.” 2 More than twelve years after his voluntary departure or- der, in 2016, Mr. Yahya moved to reopen his removal pro- ceedings. Because the ninety-day deadline for filing motions 1 A.R. at 81, 229. 2 Id. at 81. No. 17-1416 3 to reopen had passed, he sought to satisfy one of the excep- tions to the time limit by raising a claim for asylum “based on changed country conditions arising in the country of nation- ality.” 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(7)(C)(i), (ii). Mr. Yahya said that he feared that his “moderate” Islamic faith would make him a target for “radical fundamentalist Islamic groups” in Indone- sia. 3 To support this assertion, he submitted twenty news ar- ticles that, in his view, documented this threat. The IJ denied the motion. He concluded that Mr. Yahya did not provide sufficient evidence of changed conditions. He further stated that, in any event, he would “deny reopen- ing as a matter of discretion given the totality of the record.” 4 He noted that the equities in Mr. Yahya’s favor had to be bal- anced against ...
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