US appeals court rejects Indian Muslim man’s bid to halt deportation
Washington: A US federal appeals court has rejected an Indian Muslim man’s bid to avoid deportation, ruling that the violence he faced in India did not amount to persecution and finding no evidence that Indian authorities were complicit in the attack.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said local police had intervened to stop the 2016 attack on Sanaullah Khan Mohammed and noted that he could also relocate elsewhere within “the very large country of India”.
“The bumps, scrapes, and bruises Mohammed received in the May 2016 incident do not compel the conclusion that he suffered persecution,” the court said in its ruling issued this week.
“Nor has Mohammed demonstrated that the Indian government allowed the violence. Indeed, local police stopped the attack,” the three-judge panel added.
The court further said Mohammed’s claims of future persecution were weakened because the slaughterhouse business linked to the dispute was no longer operating.
“Even more, Mohammed could live somewhere else within the very large country of India,” the ruling stated.
Mohammed, who entered the US on a visitor visa on June 26, 2016, and remained after it expired later that year, applied for asylum in January 2019, well beyond the one-year deadline under US immigration law.
According to court records, Mohammed came from a Muslim family in India that operated a slaughterhouse business dealing in cow meat. The ruling said tensions arose with local Hindus “who both considered cows sacred and claimed affiliation with the Bharatiya Janata Party”.
Mohammed alleged that in May 2016 a group confronted him and his mother, threw rocks at him and beat him while demanding the closure of the slaughterhouse.
The court, however, noted that local police responded after Mohammed called for help and dispersed the attackers.
An immigration judge had earlier rejected Mohammed’s asylum application as untimely and also denied his request for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture.
The Seventh Circuit said it lacked jurisdiction to review the asylum claim because of existing legal precedent governing late asylum applications.
The judges nevertheless devoted substantial discussion to the merits of Mohammed’s withholding of removal claim and concluded that the evidence did not establish either past persecution or a likelihood of future persecution if returned to India.