Angrej Singh v. William Barr


NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 13 2020 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT ANGREJ SINGH, No. 16-73612 Petitioner, Agency No. A078-455-428 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted December 5, 2019** San Francisco, California Before: W. FLETCHER and MILLER, Circuit Judges, and PREGERSON,*** District Judge. Angrej Singh, a native and citizen of India, petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge’s * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). *** The Honorable Dean D. Pregerson, United States District Judge for the Central District of California, sitting by designation. decision denying his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. We deny the petition. 1. Substantial evidence supports the agency’s finding that Singh no longer has a well-founded fear of persecution in India because country conditions have fundamentally changed. See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.13(b)(1)(i)(A) (asylum), 1208.16(b)(1)(i)(A) (withholding of removal). In Jagtar Singh v. Holder, 753 F.3d 826 (9th Cir. 2014), we considered the sufficiency of country-conditions reports to show changed circumstances and rebut the presumption of future persecution. We concluded that the agency could rely on such documentary evidence when making an individualized determination that an applicant no longer had an objectively well-founded fear of persecution. Id. at 834–35. Here, the government submitted country-conditions reports prepared by the U.S. State Department and the U.K. Home Office in 2007 and 2008. The agency rationally construed the documentary evidence to conclude that Singh, as a low- level member and supporter of the Akali Dal Mann political party in the 1990s, would no longer face persecution in India. As we recognized in Jagtar Singh, the country-conditions reports “make no mention of either ongoing persecution of Sikhs or any risk of renewed persecution of individuals because they are Sikh, [or] members of Akali Dal (Mann).” 753 F.3d 2 at 833. For more than a decade, the State Department has found that “conditions for Indian Sikhs differ dramatically from those of the 1980s and 1990s.” The Shiromani Akali Dal is a legal political party, and Sikhs participate in the “highest levels of the Indian government.” “Any current persecution of Sikhs based on political or religious beliefs would be widely covered by India’s vibrant and open media.” According to the U.K. Home Office, even current “rank and file” members of militant Sikh-Khalistan separatist groups are unlikely to face persecution because those groups have not engaged in recent activity sufficient to attract the adverse attention of Indian authorities. Similarly, “individuals associated at a low or medium level with Sikh militant groups” are also unlikely to face persecution. Reviewing the totality of the evidence, the agency reasonably ...

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