Adedamola Ganiu v. Attorney General United States


NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ______________ No. 18-3483 ______________ ADEDAMOLA ABOLAJI GANIU, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent ______________ On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (Agency No. A073-167-224) Immigration Judge: Alberto J. Riefkohl ______________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) June 10, 2019 ______________ Before: HARDIMAN, PORTER, and COWEN, Circuit Judges. (Filed: July 12, 2019) ______________ OPINION ______________  This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. PORTER, Circuit Judge. Adedamola Abolaji Ganiu petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s order denying his motion for reconsideration of an earlier motion to reopen removal proceedings. We will deny the petition. I Ganiu, a native and citizen of Nigeria, arrived in the United States around 1993. Not long after that, Ganiu applied for asylum with the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service. After he was interviewed by an asylum officer, Ganiu was charged with removability by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Ganiu then appeared at two hearings where the immigration judge granted continuances to secure counsel. Ganiu eventually failed to appear at the final hearing date in 1996 and the immigration judge entered an order of deportation in absentia. Despite a deportation order, Ganiu remained in the United States. Several years later, Ganiu married a United States citizen and applied to register as a permanent resident. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services denied that application because of Ganiu’s pending deportation order, and instead referred him back to the immigration court. Unable to become a permanent resident because of the deportation order, Ganiu then sought to reopen his removal proceedings from 1996. An immigration judge denied his first motion to reopen as untimely and for failing to establish eligibility for relief, and the Board affirmed. Ganiu again moved to reopen, this time asserting a fear of persecution from Boko Haram as a perceived foreigner because of the decades he lived in 2 the United States. The Board again denied Ganiu’s motion. After this second denial, Ganiu moved for reconsideration, introducing additional evidence of Boko Haram’s violence. The Board held that Ganiu failed to identify an error of fact or law in the prior order; even construing his motion as a third motion to reopen due to the new evidence of Boko Haram’s violence, it still failed to support a prima facie persecution claim. So the Board denied Ganiu’s motion. Ganiu petitions this Court for review. II1 We review the Board’s denial of both a motion to reopen and a motion to reconsider for abuse of discretion. Pllumi v. Att’y Gen., 642 F.3d 155, 158 (3d Cir. 2011). Our review of the Board’s decision is deferential, and “[w]e will disturb the [Board’s] denial of a motion to reopen or to reconsider only if it was ‘arbitrary, irrational, or contrary to law.’” Borges v. Gonzales, 402 F.3d 398, 404 (3d Cir. 2005) (quoting ...

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