Victor Paul v. Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Victor Paul (hereinafter “petitioner” or “Paul”), a native and citizen of Pakistan, seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) denial of his motion to reopen his case to consider changed conditions in his native country. The BIA declined to reopen asylum proceedings because evidence of intensifying persecution of Christians in Pakistan did not bear on the immigration judge’s (“IJ”) original adverse credibility decision, and it was on the basis of that credibility ruling that Paul was denied asylum and withholding of removal in the first place. But the adverse credibility determination in this case was not a typical one. The IJ only found petitioner’s stories of past persecution incredible, and, in contrast, explicitly credited petitioner’s testimony that he was a practicing Christian. Consequently, petitioner could, independently of his defeated assertions of past persecution, have successfully made out a claim of a likelihood of future persecution by proving that, as a Christian, he would face religious persecution if returned to Pakistan. Because a petition for asylum and withholding of removal on the basis of such a risk of future persecution was potentially meritorious, the BIA abused its discretion in failing even to consider evidence of deteriorating conditions for Christians in Pakistan. Accordingly, we grant Paul’s petition for review, and we vacate and remand the case to the BIA for reconsideration.

BACKGROUND Born in Gujarat, Pakistan in June 1945, petitioner entered the United States in [*151] September 1994, and in August 1995, filed an asylum application, claiming religious persecution. In his written application, petitioner stated that he had faced aggression, harassment, and discrimination as a practicing Christian in Pakistan. In addition to the routine and widespread abuses supposedly faced by Christians throughout Pakistan, petitioner also described several instances in which Paul and his family were specifically targeted. In particular, petitioner claimed that he had been thrown out of a restaurant on account of his religion, and that, on one occasion, as he and his family left church, “fundamentalist” Muslims had hurled stones at his family, injuring his daughter’s arm.