U.S. Appeals Court Rejects Indian Man’s Bid to Avoid Deportation

WASHINGTON — A U.S. federal appeals court has rejected an Indian Muslim man’s effort to halt his deportation, ruling that the violence he experienced in India did not meet the legal threshold for persecution.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said Sanaullah Khan Mohammed had not shown that Indian authorities allowed or supported the 2016 attack he cited in his case. The court noted that local police intervened and stopped the incident.

“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.

“Nor has Mohammed demonstrated that the Indian government allowed the violence. Indeed, local police stopped the attack,” the three-judge panel added.

Mohammed entered the United States on a visitor visa on June 26, 2016, and remained after it expired later that year. He applied for asylum in January 2019, beyond the one-year deadline under U.S. 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 developed with local Hindus “who both considered cows sacred and claimed affiliation with the Bharatiya Janata Party.”

Mohammed alleged that a group confronted him and his mother in May 2016, threw rocks at him and beat him while demanding that the slaughterhouse be closed.

An immigration judge previously rejected Mohammed’s asylum application as untimely and also denied his requests 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 involving late asylum applications. The court also found that Mohammed had not established past persecution or shown that he would likely face future persecution if returned to India.

The judges said his claim of future persecution was weakened because the slaughterhouse business tied to the dispute was no longer operating. They also said Mohammed could relocate elsewhere within India.

“Even more, Mohammed could live somewhere else within the very large country of India,” the ruling stated. (Source: IANS)