Lan Ping Lauw v. Attorney General of United States

181 F. App'x 292
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedMay 25, 2006
DocketNos. 04-4648, 05-2639
StatusPublished

This text of 181 F. App'x 292 (Lan Ping Lauw v. Attorney General of United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lan Ping Lauw v. Attorney General of United States, 181 F. App'x 292 (3d Cir. 2006).

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT

RODRIGUEZ, District Judge.

Lan Ping Lauw, a native and citizen of Indonesia, petitions this Court for review of a final order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) reversing the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) grant of her application for asylum and affirming the IJ’s denial of withholding of removal. She also petitions for review of the BIA’s denial of her motion for reconsideration. We will deny the petition.

[293]*293I.

Petitioner’s testimony before the IJ was as follows. She is of Chinese ethnicity and practices Roman Catholicism, which has subjected her and her family to repeated threats and attacks by native Indonesian Muslims, known as pribumi. The first attack occurred in March of 1998, when Petitioner was approached by ten pribumi who took her bible and threw it in the trash as she was walking to church. In April of 1998, the second attack occurred when the Petitioner and her family were threatened by a pribumi taxi driver who said, “You Chinese Christians will be killed brutally.” Several days after this incident, Petitioner received a telephone call at her home with the same message repeated.

The third incident occurred in May of 1998. Petitioner, a bus driver for a Catholic school, was approached by a group who ultimately burned the school van she drove after she escaped. In the same month, Petitioner’s husband’s business was destroyed by a fire. Additional similar incidents occurred in November and December of 1998.

On October 18, 2000, Petitioner arrived in the United States at Los Angeles International Airport as a nonimmigrant visitor for pleasure with permission to remain until April 16, 2001. Instead of leaving the United States, she filed an application for asylum and withholding of removal on June 9, 2001. The Immigration and Naturalization Service placed her in removal proceedings on August 7, 2001. After a hearing on May 23, 2003, her application was granted.

In his oral opinion, the IJ found that Petitioner did not meet her burden of proof and persuasion that she suffered past persecution within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act, regulations and applicable case law. The IJ further found that Petitioner did not meet her burden as to whether she faces a reasonable possibility of future persecution leading to a well-founded fear determination. However, the IJ found, based on the two most recent reports on international religious freedom by the Department of State, the arguments of counsel, and the relevant portions of the credible source materials that were submitted, that “there is a ‘pattern or practice’ of persecution of Chinese Christians by forces of the government or by forces ... the government [is] unwilling or unable to control.” (App. at 19.) Accordingly, the IJ granted the application for asylum based on the pattern or practice finding and did not reach Petitioner’s other applications for relief.

The Department of Homeland Security appealed the IJ’s determination. Petitioner, rather than filing a brief in opposition, advised the BIA that she would rely on the IJ’s decision. On November 19, 2004, the BIA vacated the IJ’s order granting asylum and ordered Petitioner removed to Indonesia. The BIA reasoned that Petitioner did not establish that there is a pattern or practice of persecution against Chinese Catholics in Indonesia for three reasons: (1) the most recent country reports, while describing widespread conflict between Muslims and Christians in certain parts of Indonesia, did not indicate that conflict existed on Petitioner’s home island of Java or in her hometown of Jakarta; (2) the most recent country reports indicated that racially motivated attacks against Sino-Indonesians have dropped sharply since mid-1998; and (3) the testimony of Petitioner indicated that her family members, who remain in Indonesia, have not been the victims of violence since November 2001.

Following the BIA’s vacatur, Petitioner motioned for reconsideration before the BIA and petitioned this Court to review the decision. On April 29, 2005, the BIA [294]*294denied Petitioner’s motion for reconsideration as follows:

The respondent first cites two cases decided in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which are not binding upon the [BIA] in this case because the respondent’s case arises in the Third Circuit. See Lie v. Ashcroft, 396 F.3d 530 (3d Cir.2005) (finding that Indonesian Chinese Christian had not shown a pattern or practice of persecution). Second, the respondent argued that the [BIA] had failed to cite to case law in its decision. However, the [BIA] did cite to regulation and did cite to a variety of evidence contained in the record of proceedings in its decision. Third, the respondent contends that the [BIA] incorrectly found that the respondent had not suffered past persecution and did not have a well-founded fear of future persecution. However, the [BIA’s] order clearly states that these issues were not raised on appeal; the only finding that was reviewed was the [IJ’s] finding of a pattern and practice of persecution of Chinese Christians in Indonesia. Fourth, the respondent argues that the [BIA] should have granted the respondent withholding of removal, but has not supported this argument with citations to cases or items in the record. Finally, the respondent argues that the [BIA] erred in affirming the [IJ’s] finding in this regard, because the [IJ] did not reach the issue of [Convention Against Torture] relief after he granted the respondent asylum. Rather, based on the facts as found by the [IJ], we concluded that the respondent had not shown a likelihood of torture.

(App. at 22-23.) The Petitioner once again petitioned this Court to review the BIA’s decision. On May 20, 2005, the petitions were consolidated by this Court for purposes of briefing and disposition.

II.

We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a) to review final orders of removal issued by the BIA. We review the BIA’s factual determination that a petitioner failed to prove pattern or practice under the substantial evidence standard. Lusingo v. Gonzales, 420 F.3d 193, 199 (3d Cir.2005) (citing Balasubramanrim v. INS, 143 F.3d 157, 161 (3d Cir.1998)). “To reverse the BIA finding we must find that the evidence not only supports that conclusion, but compels it____” INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. 812, 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992). We review the BIA’s denial of a motion for reconsideration for abuse of discretion. Guo v. Ashcroft, 386 F.3d 556, 562 (3d Cir.2004).

III.

Petitioner argues that the BIA’s finding that she failed to prove a pattern or practice of persecution of Chinese Catholics in Indonesia is unsupported by substantial evidence. We disagree.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
181 F. App'x 292, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lan-ping-lauw-v-attorney-general-of-united-states-ca3-2006.