[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
24-9508, Moondee versus Garland.

[00:00:06] Speaker 01:
Mr. July, are you ready to proceed?

[00:00:19] Speaker 03:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:00:20] Speaker 03:
My name is Douglas July.

[00:00:22] Speaker 03:
I am Petitioner's Counsel appearing pro bono today.

[00:00:28] Speaker 03:
Good morning.

[00:00:29] Speaker 03:
May it please the court?

[00:00:31] Speaker 03:
Your honor, this case holistically regards substantial evidence and whether the judges at the Board of Immigration Appeals conclusions were supported by substantial evidence.

[00:00:46] Speaker 03:
We also have an argument for abusive discretion on whether there was intentional

[00:00:56] Speaker 03:
ignorance of evidence or certain facts that were ignored, but our primary argument is substantial evidence.

[00:01:04] Speaker 03:
Regarding the first, I'm sorry, I'd like to reserve five minutes for rebuttal.

[00:01:12] Speaker 01:
We'll see how that works, it doesn't always work out that way.

[00:01:15] Speaker 03:
Just saying.

[00:01:18] Speaker 03:
The first issue that we draw attention to in the briefing is the

[00:01:25] Speaker 03:
country conditions and I think the 2022 10th Circuit case regarding a Cameroonian national highlights the difference between the way the 10th Circuit interprets the situation in Cameroon and the way the Board of Immigration appeals and the immigration judge as well interpreted the situation, the political situation in Cameroon

[00:01:54] Speaker 03:
And I don't think, not only was it just, I think, unfair, but more importantly, it was not supported by substantial evidence to characterize what's happening in Cameroon as garden variety, civil unrest, or quote unquote, some civil unrest or civil strife.

[00:02:16] Speaker 03:
That rings of a tone that seems to be sweeping the matter under the rug.

[00:02:21] Speaker 03:
There's human rights atrocities happening in Cameroon and I think if the board is characterizing it as your garden variety civil unrest, maybe there were protests around an election time and it's done now or it's garden variety.

[00:02:38] Speaker 03:
That's not what's happening.

[00:02:40] Speaker 03:
This has been ongoing since the current regime has been in power.

[00:02:45] Speaker 03:
Anybody who politically dissents is

[00:02:49] Speaker 03:
kidnapped, tortured, their family is also tortured.

[00:02:52] Speaker 03:
The country conditions and the 10th Circuit's own published case law shows that in detail.

[00:03:00] Speaker 03:
So I don't think it was, I think that was a mistake.

[00:03:02] Speaker 03:
I think that's reversible error.

[00:03:04] Speaker 03:
Characterize, first off, characterize the situation as some civil unrest.

[00:03:09] Speaker 03:
And that dovetails into

[00:03:13] Speaker 03:
The second argument that was not supported by, that the board's decision was not supported by substantial evidence, which is that the petitioner's sister was not on the whole subject of torture.

[00:03:29] Speaker 03:
We have in the evidence, we have a letter from the petitioner's sister that says that she was subject to untold, quote unquote, untold inhumane treatment, detained for 10 days,

[00:03:42] Speaker 03:
She was subject to threats, beating, and torture.

[00:03:47] Speaker 03:
We also have... Was that described in any detail?

[00:03:51] Speaker 03:
Unfortunately, we did not have more detail than that, but we did have a medical record that showed chest trauma and two days of hospitalization after her 10 days in police detention.

[00:04:05] Speaker 03:
And that's why that first part regarding the country conditions is so critical, because

[00:04:14] Speaker 03:
this evidence coexists with the country conditions.

[00:04:18] Speaker 00:
Was there a question as far as country conditions, whether it was across the entire country?

[00:04:26] Speaker 00:
In other words, there were places to relocate where that would not be an issue.

[00:04:32] Speaker 03:
If we look at our own Department of State report, it shows that the issue is pervasive throughout the country.

[00:04:39] Speaker 03:
In addition, internal relocation was not an issue that was raised below.

[00:04:45] Speaker 03:
It was not a reason for the denial.

[00:04:47] Speaker 03:
And so I would argue that it wasn't, it isn't an issue that's at contest here.

[00:04:57] Speaker 03:
But I think if we look at, in the contributions, we look at our own Department of State report, which is always the north star of these cases.

[00:05:07] Speaker 03:
we'll see that it's a pervasive issue throughout the country.

[00:05:15] Speaker 03:
The third issue is petitioners' own political activism and his own being targeted by the authorities.

[00:05:28] Speaker 03:
And the board stated that, well, the immigration judge and the board relied on the immigration judge's statement

[00:05:37] Speaker 03:
The petitioner's limited political activism, and I'm quoting, is not for the court to find that it would be more likely than not that he is in a similar position as other citizens of Cameroon who have returned to Cameroon and have been subjected for some sort of harm there.

[00:05:54] Speaker 03:
And I think we're, again, where the board and the immigration judge miss here was

[00:06:08] Speaker 03:
seen in the backdrop of this unforgiving regime.

[00:06:17] Speaker 03:
I mean they're going after any political dissent.

[00:06:20] Speaker 01:
Let me ask you, where did you discuss this in your brief?

[00:06:24] Speaker 01:
I just searched your brief for the word unrest and it appears once in your brief and did you go through this and explain that all

[00:06:35] Speaker 01:
Anyone who objected politically to the regime was being tortured and kidnapped.

[00:06:40] Speaker 01:
Is that in your brief?

[00:06:41] Speaker 01:
In your own brief?

[00:06:42] Speaker 03:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:06:43] Speaker 03:
One moment.

[00:06:51] Speaker 03:
I'm using strife and unrest interchangeably.

[00:06:54] Speaker 03:
And the first issue I raise is the immigration judge's statement that the board relies on that

[00:07:03] Speaker 03:
Cameroon is going through quote, some civil strife.

[00:07:08] Speaker 03:
And then I just, I thought the court's opinion, this court's opinion in Gonzales, Aguilar v. Garland is just so instructive.

[00:07:18] Speaker 03:
And I quoted right out of that opinion because it's just so directly on point for the situation in Cameroon.

[00:07:29] Speaker 03:
Of course the hundreds of pages

[00:07:31] Speaker 03:
of country conditions support what I'm saying.

[00:07:35] Speaker 03:
But the Tenth Circuit, in its own opinion, details that very well and eloquently.

[00:07:43] Speaker 03:
And so I'm relying on that.

[00:07:46] Speaker 03:
And the board did not say some civil strife.

[00:07:57] Speaker 03:
They said garden variety civil strife.

[00:08:02] Speaker 03:
and I just didn't think that was fair.

[00:08:08] Speaker 03:
Petitioner, one key, so in my third argument, which is part C of my brief, petitioners quote unquote limited political activism.

[00:08:22] Speaker 03:
This issue that, well, the petitioner was not active enough in the political realm to be targeted by the government of Cameroon.

[00:08:32] Speaker 03:
But the key fact that is not mentioned by the immigration judge or the board at all is that on his phone, or excuse me, on the sister's phone, when they confiscated the sister's phone, they found messages from her brother, who is the petitioner, regarding this political activism.

[00:08:59] Speaker 03:
Quite frankly, I feel like it was just ignored.

[00:09:03] Speaker 03:
And I do understand that the case... You think it was ignored by the IJ and the board?

[00:09:06] Speaker 03:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:09:07] Speaker 03:
And I do know that the case law, and I cite from our Ninth Circuit that the board and the immigration judge, they don't have to write an exegesis on every piece of evidence.

[00:09:21] Speaker 03:
But I do believe this was a critical point of identifying him, even if he's

[00:09:30] Speaker 03:
not the most politically active person, he's still been identified.

[00:09:35] Speaker 03:
And that dissidence has been imputed upon him.

[00:09:38] Speaker 03:
And when he shows that... Okay.

[00:09:41] Speaker 01:
Do we have a record?

[00:09:43] Speaker 01:
Does the record show exactly what those messages on her phone were?

[00:09:47] Speaker 01:
And does it show that the government did consider him a political opponent as a result?

[00:09:56] Speaker 03:
In response to Your Honor's first question, we do not have the messages themselves.

[00:10:02] Speaker 01:
We just have her statement.

[00:10:03] Speaker 03:
We have her statement that they took her phone and they were asking, questioning her about... They questioned her about her brother?

[00:10:13] Speaker 03:
Yeah, correct.

[00:10:14] Speaker 03:
And also his own testimony that, and we're not in hearsay, we're under fundamental fairness evidence so it can be considered, his own testimony that that's what his sister told him.

[00:10:26] Speaker 03:
In response to the court's second question, this is critical because if we look at the 10th Circuit's decision and my quote from that decision in Gonzalez-Hangularga-Garland, in that case, there's a lot of evidence about ICE deportees

[00:10:54] Speaker 03:
having their being identified at the airport by a dragnet.

[00:11:03] Speaker 03:
In Cameroon.

[00:11:04] Speaker 03:
In Cameroon.

[00:11:05] Speaker 03:
And so again, that recent 2022 published case is very instructive as to what happens to somebody like Petitioner who can be.

[00:11:14] Speaker 03:
And this is just more likely than not.

[00:11:16] Speaker 03:
It's a 50% chance.

[00:11:18] Speaker 03:
It's not beyond a reasonable doubt.

[00:11:21] Speaker 00:
It's an odd situation.

[00:11:25] Speaker 00:
in the law where he has been returned to Cameroon.

[00:11:29] Speaker 00:
And so when we talk about likelihood and possibilities, it's either happened or it hasn't.

[00:11:35] Speaker 00:
And I know that that doesn't move your case.

[00:11:39] Speaker 00:
But if in fact he was returned when, it's been a while.

[00:11:42] Speaker 00:
2005.

[00:11:45] Speaker 00:
And so in that intervening time, if there hasn't been torture, he would, if we were to

[00:11:53] Speaker 00:
or if the board were ultimately to grant him cat relief, would he arrive back in America and get on a plane back for Cameroon?

[00:12:03] Speaker 00:
He would be returned, yes.

[00:12:06] Speaker 00:
Speaking from personal experience, he would be returned.

[00:12:11] Speaker 00:
All right.

[00:12:11] Speaker 00:
But we don't have any information on whether he was tortured after being returned.

[00:12:17] Speaker 03:
Your Honor, in regards to 2005, or?

[00:12:20] Speaker 00:
No.

[00:12:21] Speaker 00:
I thought that he had been removed.

[00:12:23] Speaker 00:
He took a voluntary trip back to Cameroon.

[00:12:28] Speaker 00:
But then he was removed.

[00:12:30] Speaker 03:
He has been removed, yes.

[00:12:31] Speaker 03:
And we don't have any further evidence.

[00:12:33] Speaker 03:
That would be the subject of a motion to reopen.

[00:12:36] Speaker 03:
But the motion to reopen deadline has run.

[00:12:38] Speaker 03:
And as the responding counsel notified the court, there was a motion to reopen that was denied.

[00:12:47] Speaker 03:
But again, I don't think that's before the court.

[00:12:50] Speaker 03:
Even if, let's say he was tortured, how would I get that evidence before the court?

[00:12:57] Speaker 01:
So with respect to the 2005 trip, was that after his sister's phone had been seized?

[00:13:04] Speaker 03:
No, no, no, no.

[00:13:05] Speaker 03:
This was, and the last point which I'll just briefly touch on, this is the situation with Colonel Bamkui and the affair that, with the,

[00:13:21] Speaker 03:
Colonel Bemkui's mistress and this vendetta that Colonel Bemkui has against the petitioner.

[00:13:36] Speaker 03:
That relates back, I would say that is in play for when he went back and there was this warrant for his arrest.

[00:13:44] Speaker 03:
That's my last argument is that the warrant was presumed to be valid

[00:13:50] Speaker 03:
and I thought that was unfairly characterized and make the same arguments on substantial evidence.

[00:13:55] Speaker 01:
So as I understand your argument, it's that he's been revealed as a political opponent of the regime through his sister's phone.

[00:14:06] Speaker 01:
The country reports say that political opponents are systematically tortured and his sister was tortured and therefore we should expect or one should

[00:14:20] Speaker 01:
make a finding that there's a likelihood of his being tortured if he's returned to Cameroon.

[00:14:25] Speaker 01:
More likely than not.

[00:14:26] Speaker 01:
Now, one step in that is his sister's torture.

[00:14:29] Speaker 01:
But didn't the BIA and the IJ find that she was not tortured and that that was not challenged in your brief here?

[00:14:39] Speaker 03:
No.

[00:14:39] Speaker 03:
What they found was that the withholding of removal eligibility was not challenged, and that was waived.

[00:14:47] Speaker 03:
Regarding the sister's torture,

[00:14:50] Speaker 03:
We did challenge that, and the board again found that... But the board found that she was not tortured, is that right?

[00:14:58] Speaker 01:
That's correct, the IJN board.

[00:15:00] Speaker 01:
Okay, and do you challenge that in your brief in this course?

[00:15:02] Speaker 03:
Yes, I do, that's at subsection B of my... It's labeled threats to petitioner's sister, but the argument is that they should have found that she was tortured.

[00:15:19] Speaker 00:
Under substantial evidence standard.

[00:15:22] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:15:23] Speaker 00:
Which means we had to be compelled to believe that the board got her wrong.

[00:15:28] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:15:28] Speaker 00:
So it's not just a what do you think, do you agree or disagree, it's a much tougher standard.

[00:15:35] Speaker 03:
This was in the context that her statements were not challenged before the immigration judge.

[00:15:43] Speaker 03:
She was on the witness list to testify but we did not.

[00:15:46] Speaker 03:
solicit her testimony because DHS did not challenge her testimony.

[00:15:52] Speaker 03:
My time is up.

[00:15:55] Speaker 03:
I thank the court for the time, sincerely.

[00:15:59] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:16:01] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:16:02] Speaker 01:
Mr. Spurlock.

[00:16:11] Speaker 02:
Good morning.

[00:16:11] Speaker 02:
May it please the court?

[00:16:13] Speaker 02:
Matthew Spurlock on behalf of the United States.

[00:16:16] Speaker 02:
I'd like to start out with what were the two bases that the immigration judge and the IJ found that he was not eligible, he was not more than likely than not to be tortured if he's returned to Cameroon.

[00:16:30] Speaker 02:
There were two bases that he provided for why he believed he would be tortured.

[00:16:34] Speaker 02:
Number one, he had this old relationship that involved a colonel in Cameroon that maybe had a relationship with his

[00:16:44] Speaker 02:
the mother of his child and that this colonel still had it out for the petitioner.

[00:16:50] Speaker 02:
And years later, he would seek him out and try and kill him or torture him or whatever.

[00:16:56] Speaker 02:
That was the first basis for why he feared going back to Cameroon.

[00:16:59] Speaker 02:
The other basis for why he feared going back to Cameroon was that there was an incident where his sister, who is involved in political, I guess, political protests in Cameroon,

[00:17:12] Speaker 02:
was recording videos of police brutality and she was detained and beat by the police.

[00:17:20] Speaker 02:
And when they detained her, they looked at her phone and there was a video from petitioner that was on her phone.

[00:17:27] Speaker 02:
And the Cameroonian officials or police or whoever got her phone confronted her about this.

[00:17:34] Speaker 02:
And she said, well, that's from my brother, I suppose.

[00:17:38] Speaker 02:
That's the entire basis for what his fear of being tortured has returned to him.

[00:17:42] Speaker 01:
Well, the country conditions.

[00:17:44] Speaker 02:
I'll get to that in just a minute, Your Honor.

[00:17:45] Speaker 01:
But you don't think he argued that?

[00:17:47] Speaker 02:
I think he argued it, but I think it's important to look at what those bases were for what his claim of fear of torture was.

[00:17:55] Speaker 02:
It was not.

[00:17:56] Speaker 02:
It was not that he was anything like the people that are listed in the country conditions in all of the articles that are in that record.

[00:18:06] Speaker 02:
about people who, when they returned, were immediately detained and suffered various forms of persecution.

[00:18:12] Speaker 02:
He has nothing in common with those people.

[00:18:15] Speaker 02:
Most of those individuals that were highlighted in all of those submissions and the record don't have anything to do with him.

[00:18:24] Speaker 02:
And the board and the immigration judge found this specifically.

[00:18:28] Speaker 02:
What they said was that his level of political activism or participation

[00:18:34] Speaker 02:
It's nothing like these other people.

[00:18:36] Speaker 02:
And that's backed up by his own testimony.

[00:18:39] Speaker 02:
He was asked during his testimony, do you go out in the streets and protest?

[00:18:45] Speaker 02:
He said, no, I'm not political.

[00:18:47] Speaker 02:
What I do is I'm a member of Code USA, which is some organization that is in favor of human rights in Cameroon.

[00:18:56] Speaker 02:
That's what he said.

[00:18:57] Speaker 02:
But I get money, I post stuff, and I support them.

[00:19:01] Speaker 02:
That's what he said.

[00:19:02] Speaker 02:
But when he was asked further, what is the nature of that organization?

[00:19:06] Speaker 02:
Where are they headquartered?

[00:19:08] Speaker 02:
He had no evidence of any of this.

[00:19:09] Speaker 02:
And he had no evidence of any payments that he'd ever made to the organization.

[00:19:14] Speaker 02:
So his level of activism is limited to basically sending videos that his sister got a hold of.

[00:19:21] Speaker 02:
And it's also very important, when the sister got a hold of the video, the extent of the government in Cameron's interest and petitioner, when they got that cell phone,

[00:19:30] Speaker 02:
was to look at the cell phone and say, oh, tell your brother to stop sending me these videos.

[00:19:36] Speaker 02:
That's it.

[00:19:36] Speaker 02:
There's no follow-up interrogations of the sister.

[00:19:41] Speaker 02:
Where is your brother located?

[00:19:42] Speaker 02:
There's no follow-up interest in his whereabouts at all.

[00:19:46] Speaker 02:
There's none of that evidence.

[00:19:47] Speaker 02:
And that would all be crucial evidence if you were going to try and show that it's more likely than not that the government of Canterbury is still interested in petitioner after all of these years.

[00:19:58] Speaker 02:
And I do think,

[00:19:59] Speaker 02:
It does kind of go back to the argument about the country conditions in that petitioner is arguing Gonzales Aguilar.

[00:20:11] Speaker 02:
That's talking about ignoring country conditions evidence, ignoring the evidence.

[00:20:17] Speaker 02:
The immigration judge at the board didn't ignore evidence here.

[00:20:20] Speaker 02:
They grappled with this evidence.

[00:20:21] Speaker 02:
They discussed this evidence.

[00:20:23] Speaker 02:
It's kind of hard to tell exactly because the immigration judge sort of bifurcates their decision because

[00:20:29] Speaker 02:
The immigration judge was initially interested in both if this case went to asylum or withholding, if it wasn't just a cat deferral case.

[00:20:38] Speaker 02:
So some of their analysis of that is in the withholding section for whether or not he met the requirements for persecution.

[00:20:46] Speaker 02:
But they grapple with that evidence and they say after reviewing over 591 pages of this evidence, he does not look like any of these people that are facing all these different types of circumstances.

[00:20:58] Speaker 02:
Petitioners never testified and there's never any evidence that he's at all involved in the major conflict that's going on in Cameroon, which is a separatist conflict between the Francophones and the Southwest and the Northwest against, I'm sorry, that would be the Anglophones, against the Francophones and the rest of the country.

[00:21:16] Speaker 02:
There's essentially an ongoing battle that's been going on for years in Cameroon.

[00:21:22] Speaker 02:
He hasn't talked about being a member or a part of that at all in any way, shape, or form.

[00:21:29] Speaker 02:
And that's in contrast to this court's decision.

[00:21:31] Speaker 02:
And I believe the name of the case is Takwe, which is in both of our briefs.

[00:21:35] Speaker 02:
They relied on it.

[00:21:36] Speaker 02:
And that's an excellent description of exactly what I'm talking about, which is that in Takwe, that individual, that petitioner, who was fearful of going back to Cameroon, was active in, I believe, the Southern Cameroonian political movement.

[00:21:53] Speaker 02:
He was a member of that.

[00:21:55] Speaker 02:
We don't get any of that from this petitioner whatsoever.

[00:21:59] Speaker 02:
Just one more point also about the, I wanted to also talk about the evidence that the petitioner just mentioned that he's concerned about with whether or not the sister was tortured or not, whether her attack by the Cameron authorities, whether that amounted to torture.

[00:22:20] Speaker 02:
I would just argue that both the immigration judge and the board considered the evidence that she provided that was in exhibit 11

[00:22:29] Speaker 02:
of the record, which were the letters from the attorney, from the sister, and I believe also there was medical, there was a medical document in there as well, and they considered that evidence and determined very clearly that the evidence of what they had, she experienced, did not rise to the level of torture.

[00:22:47] Speaker 02:
And I would argue substantial evidence would support that finding as well.

[00:22:51] Speaker 02:
And to further support that, if you look at the sister's own language in her letter, that's on AR,

[00:22:58] Speaker 02:
226, she just talks about she was threatened, she was humiliated, she was detained, and she says she was assaulted.

[00:23:07] Speaker 02:
But even those, as horrible as those things are in our view of how police interact with their own citizens, but that doesn't necessarily meet the definition of torture.

[00:23:19] Speaker 02:
It doesn't necessarily rise to the level of torture.

[00:23:21] Speaker 02:
And she was detained for, I believe, over a week or something like that.

[00:23:25] Speaker 02:
But based on that evidence, the immigration judge and the board made the determination that what she experienced did not rise to the level of torture.

[00:23:33] Speaker 01:
Do you concede that he challenged that on appeal?

[00:23:37] Speaker 01:
The finding that she was not tortured?

[00:23:40] Speaker 02:
I believe he did.

[00:23:42] Speaker 02:
I think he argued in the context of they did not consider the evidence.

[00:23:48] Speaker 02:
And that's a repeating theme in the entire

[00:23:54] Speaker 02:
position of the petitioner is that they didn't consider the evidence, but there's overwhelming indications in the board and the immigration judge's decision that they considered the evidence.

[00:24:04] Speaker 02:
He's just quarreling with the result that they came to.

[00:24:07] Speaker 02:
And the standard is substantial evidence, and he has not presented anything that would compel a reasonable fact finder to find differently than what the agency did in this case.

[00:24:18] Speaker 02:
I'll just quickly talk a little bit more about the issue with the Colonel.

[00:24:23] Speaker 02:
He also said that the immigration judge was engaged in speculation that the warrant that was out for his arrest in 2014 after he had returned from departing Cameroon, that that warrant was for legitimate purposes.

[00:24:41] Speaker 02:
Like the immigration judge said, for all we know, that warrant was for legitimate purposes.

[00:24:46] Speaker 02:
And that's that argument.

[00:24:48] Speaker 02:
But the reality is that that entire claim is based on speculation.

[00:24:52] Speaker 02:
He's never had any contact with this colonel in Cameroon.

[00:24:56] Speaker 02:
He's never had any communications from this colonel in Cameroon, never been threatened by the colonel or anybody acting on behalf of the colonel.

[00:25:03] Speaker 02:
This never happened.

[00:25:04] Speaker 02:
All he knows is what the mother of his child told him, oh, I had a relationship with this colonel.

[00:25:11] Speaker 02:
You better be careful.

[00:25:12] Speaker 02:
He's gonna come get you.

[00:25:13] Speaker 02:
That's it.

[00:25:14] Speaker 02:
That's all we have.

[00:25:16] Speaker 02:
And the fact that when he returned, he was able to rent an apartment.

[00:25:20] Speaker 02:
He lived in Cameroon for some period of time.

[00:25:24] Speaker 02:
And during that time, supposedly, a neighbor saw a police come to the house and said, oh, there's people looking for you.

[00:25:30] Speaker 02:
They had a warrant.

[00:25:31] Speaker 02:
But there's never been a production of a warrant.

[00:25:32] Speaker 02:
We've never seen a warrant.

[00:25:34] Speaker 02:
We don't know what the warrant's for.

[00:25:35] Speaker 02:
We have no idea if that warrant has anything, if it exists, has anything to do with this colonel who supposedly has the personal

[00:25:45] Speaker 02:
gripe against this petitioner years and years and years later.

[00:25:48] Speaker 02:
And there's just no evidence of it.

[00:25:50] Speaker 02:
It's one speculation after another.

[00:25:53] Speaker 02:
And that's not enough to meet his burden of proof for cat protection at all.

[00:25:59] Speaker 02:
I just also wanted to briefly talk about, go back to the country conditions evidence as well as what he just mentioned.

[00:26:06] Speaker 02:
His status as a returnee to

[00:26:11] Speaker 02:
Cameroon and that there's evidence that a lot of these people who are returning from the United States are being picked out and tortured or abused or persecuted by the Cameroonian government.

[00:26:25] Speaker 02:
And I would argue that, first of all, going back to what I said at the very beginning, that was never a basis for his fear of going back to Cameroon.

[00:26:33] Speaker 02:
It was never, I'm a returnee, I'm a deportee.

[00:26:37] Speaker 02:
That's frequently a claim that people make.

[00:26:39] Speaker 02:
deportees from the United States who go to a certain country are immediately picked up and told, oh, we're going to go through your papers.

[00:26:47] Speaker 02:
We're going to figure out who you are.

[00:26:49] Speaker 02:
He never made that claim.

[00:26:50] Speaker 02:
He never testified to that.

[00:26:51] Speaker 02:
He never put that in a statement.

[00:26:53] Speaker 02:
That's simply, oh, but look at our evidence here that says that this has happened to a lot of people.

[00:26:59] Speaker 02:
But I would argue that the immigration judge covered that because they said he is

[00:27:05] Speaker 02:
not similarly situated to any of those people that were listed in those articles.

[00:27:10] Speaker 02:
It's completely different.

[00:27:12] Speaker 02:
So based on that, I think that substantial evidence supports the agency's decision in this case.

[00:27:18] Speaker 02:
And I believe the court should leave that decision unstirred.

[00:27:24] Speaker 01:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:27:25] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:27:26] Speaker 01:
I believe your time had expired.

[00:27:28] Speaker 01:
Is that correct?

[00:27:29] Speaker 02:
Could I ask for 30 seconds, Your Honor?

[00:27:32] Speaker 01:
No more.

[00:27:35] Speaker 03:
30 seconds here.

[00:27:38] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:27:39] Speaker 03:
I really encourage the panel to really look at the board's decision.

[00:27:45] Speaker 03:
In their decision, they leave out a key fact.

[00:27:50] Speaker 03:
In nowhere in the immigration judge's decision or the board's decision does it acknowledge or consider that they went through the sister's phone and identified the brother.

[00:27:58] Speaker 03:
That's number one.

[00:27:59] Speaker 03:
Number two, nowhere in those decisions is there any citation to country conditions evidence.

[00:28:05] Speaker 03:
They say they went through it, but there's no citations.

[00:28:08] Speaker 03:
They don't discuss any of the country conditions.

[00:28:10] Speaker 03:
Thank you so much.

[00:28:14] Speaker 01:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:28:15] Speaker 01:
Case is submitted.