USCA11 Case: 19-13103 Date Filed: 01/26/2021 Page: 1 of 11 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________ No. 19-13103 ________________________ Agency No. A201-060-115 LILA RAJ GAUTAM, Petitioner, versus U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. ________________________ Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals ________________________ (January 26, 2021) Before MARTIN, NEWSOM, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges. MARTIN, Circuit Judge: Lila Raj Gautam seeks review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision affirming the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his petition for asylum, USCA11 Case: 19-13103 Date Filed: 01/26/2021 Page: 2 of 11 withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). After careful consideration and with the benefit of oral argument, we deny his petition. I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND Mr. Gautam is a native and citizen of Nepal and is a member of the Nepali Congress Party (“NPC”). The NPC opposes the Maoist Party, which has been in and out of power in Nepal over the past twenty years. In 2000, while still living in Nepal, Mr. Gautam was arrested for the rape and murder of a young woman. He was detained for ten months. Although Mr. Gautam was acquitted by the trial court and the appellate court affirmed his acquittal, the Nepalese Supreme Court convicted him in 2009 and sentenced him to twenty years in prison. Mr. Gautam maintains that he did not learn of the Supreme Court’s ruling until 2017, when family members sent him newspaper articles describing the government’s efforts to find him. Mr. Gautam first entered the United States in May 2010 and first applied for asylum in March 2011. In that application, he stated he had previously been arrested but did not elaborate. He attached a correction sheet indicating that he had never been accused, charged, or arrested for any crime. Mr. Gautam’s application went before an IJ, who credited Mr. Gautam’s testimony and granted him asylum 2 USCA11 Case: 19-13103 Date Filed: 01/26/2021 Page: 3 of 11 on the basis that he had a reasonable fear of persecution based on his association with the NPC. In November 2017, INTERPOL issued a notice indicating that Mr. Gautam was wanted in Nepal where he was supposed to serve a twenty-year sentence for murder. The Department of Homeland Security arrested Mr. Gautam and charged him as removable for committing a crime involving moral turpitude and for procuring a benefit—asylum—by fraud or willful misrepresentation. An IJ sustained both charges. Mr. Gautam also filed a new I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT relief. In this application, Mr. Gautam asserted that he had been persecuted by the Maoists in Nepal based on his membership in the NPC and his religious designation as a Brahmin. He also stated that his arrest and subsequent conviction for murder were themselves forms of political persecution. At his merits hearing before the IJ, Mr. Gautam testified that he only recently learned of his conviction. Mr. Gautam said he failed to disclose the ...
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Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals