In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 20-3205 NADIIA BOHDANIVNA CHUCHMAN, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A206-590-765. ___________________ ARGUED JULY 7, 2021 — DECIDED JULY 12, 2021 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges. KANNE, Circuit Judge. Nadiia Chuchman, a citizen of Ukraine, appeals the denial of her application for asylum based on political opinion. She maintains that the Ukrainian government persecuted her nearly a decade ago for her polit- ical activity in opposing the former president. She primarily argues that the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigra- tion Appeals erred in finding that she had not experienced past persecution after government actors beat her severely, 2 No. 20-3205 detained her for a day, and pressured her university’s dean to expel her if she remained politically active. She also maintains that they ignored evidence of ongoing corruption in Ukraine when finding that her political party’s rise to power meant she was unlikely to be persecuted in the future. Because substan- tial evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that Chuch- man’s experience in Ukraine did not rise to the level of perse- cution, and because she failed to present compelling evidence that the new Ukrainian government would persecute her if she returned, we deny the petition for review. I. BACKGROUND In November 2010, Chuchman, then a seventeen-year-old university student, joined the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR), a political party that opposed then-pres- ident Viktor Yanukovych. (Yanukovych would later be re- moved from office in the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution.) As a party member, she participated in meetings and protests, spoke out against the Yanukovych regime, and tried to recruit students and community members to oppose Yanukovych and join UDAR. In September 2012, her university’s dean warned Chuch- man that she could be expelled for her political activity. The dean said that government representatives had ordered him to stop student protests against Yanukovych, and they had singled her out by name. He asked her to leave UDAR. De- spite the warning, she continued her political activity. Two months later, police assaulted, arrested, and detained Chuchman at a massive rally against electoral corruption. The Berkut (an elite police force that worked for the Yanukovych regime) closed in on the crowd with shields and batons, and No. 20-3205 3 a Berkut officer grabbed Chuchman’s wrist. When she tried to break free, the officer hit her in the shoulder with his baton and then forced her into a nearby van. She was detained for a day and then released without charges. A few days later, the dean again implored Chuchman to stop her political activity. He explained that he had resisted pressure from government representatives to have her ex- pelled, but he would not be able to protect her next time. Af- terward, Chuchman said she was “scared,” and for several months she stopped her political activism. …
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