Case: 19-13243 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 1 of 10 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________ No. 19-13243 Non-Argument Calendar ________________________ Agency No. A200-736-979 ELEONORA ALEKSEYEVNA LINYUSHINA, a.k.a. Eleonoza Linyushina, ANZOR ASLANOVICH MATSEV, Petitioners, versus U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. ________________________ Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals ________________________ (August 24, 2020) Before JORDAN, LAGOA, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Case: 19-13243 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 2 of 10 Eleonora Linyushina and her husband, Anzor Matsev, petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision upholding the denial of their request for asylum. Linyushina claims that she was kidnapped, beaten, nearly raped, and threatened with death by the authorities in her native Russia because she planned to testify as an alibi witness at the trial of an accused criminal. Because Linyushina did not administratively exhaust one of her contentions, we dismiss the petition in part for lack of jurisdiction. And because she did not establish a nexus between her claimed persecution and any protected ground, we deny the remainder of the petition. I. In 2009 the Russian authorities arrested a friend of Linyushina’s, Zalim Shibzukhov, and accused him of kidnapping a militia officer and of unlawfully carrying weapons. 1 Zalim’s father, Boris Shibzukhov, contacted Linyushina and told her that he was looking for an alibi witness for Zalim. After consulting some text messages saved on her cell phone, Linyushina remembered that she had been with Zalim on the day of the alleged kidnapping, and she told Boris that she wanted to help her friend. Boris put her in touch with Zalim’s attorney. 1 Our recitation of the facts is based on Linyushina’s testimony before the immigration judge. Although the immigration judge found that Linyushina was not credible, the Board did not adopt that finding and instead proceeded on the assumption that Linyushina was credible. We will proceed on that assumption too, because any credibility findings by the immigration judge that the Board did not reach are not properly before this Court. See Gonzalez v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 820 F.3d 399, 403 (11th Cir. 2016). 2 Case: 19-13243 Date Filed: 08/24/2020 Page: 3 of 10 After talking to the attorney, Linyushina went to the police station to meet with the investigator in charge of Zalim’s case. She was turned away. A few days later, she came back and caught up with the investigator in the hallway. He told her that he was busy, but she insisted that her testimony was “very important” and would not take long. The investigator grabbed her by the arm and told her that the case against Zalim was “clear” and they would not need her testimony. He also warned her that if she tried to help Zalim, she would “attract bad things to [her]self.” Because the investigator wouldn’t listen to her, Linyushina met with Zalim’s attorney so that he could take her statement about where Zalim was and what he was ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals