Mohamed M. Muthana v. MARKWAYNE MULLIN , Secretary of Homeland Security,∗

In the
United States Court of Appeals
for the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 24-2320
M OHAMED M. M UTHANA, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
M ARKWAYNE M ULLIN ,
Secretary of Homeland Security,∗ et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 22 cv 2200 — LaShonda A. Hunt, Judge.
____________________
S UBMITTED JANUARY 17, 2025 — DECIDED A PRIL 1, 2026
____________________
Before S YKES , HAMILTON , and PRYOR , Circuit Judges.
SYKES, Circuit Judge. Mohamed Muthana, a native of
Yemen, became a United States citizen in 2001. Early in 2002
he filed I-130 visa petitions for the benefit of several family
members—including, as relevant here, his stepdaughter
∗ We have substituted Markwayne Mullin, the current Secretary of
Homeland Security. See FED . R. APP. P. 43(c)(2).

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2 No. 24-2320
Halimah. An I-130 petition is the first step in the family-based
immigration process and establishes the petitioner’s
citizenship and familial relationship to the beneficiary.
In September 2002 the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (“INS”) sent Muthana a notice of intent to deny the
petitions and gave him 90 days to submit additional evidence
establishing the claimed familial relationships. Muthana did
not respond, so INS sent him a letter denying the petitions.
Twenty years later Muthana sued the Secretary of
Homeland Security and other officials claiming that he never
received these documents because the INS mistakenly sent
them to 4737 N. Kildare Avenue in Chicago, an address where
he never lived. The complaint sought to reopen the I-130
proceedings relating to Halimah—the other family
beneficiaries had since obtained visas—and alleged that the
lack of notice violated due process and the Administrative
Procedure Act (“APA”). Muthana attached a copy of the
relevant I-130 petition, but the address portion was
conspicuously redacted.
The redaction was odd because Muthana’s claims rested
entirely on his allegation that the INS had made an address
error. The defendants answered and moved for judgment on
the pleadings, submitting an unredacted copy of Muthana’s
I-130 with their responsive pleadings. The unredacted
petition shows that Muthana listed 4737 N. Kildare Avenue in
Chicago as his address.
Muthana filed a superficial response that did not engage
with the decisive effect of the unredacted I-130 petition. The
judge held a hearing, but Muthana’s attorney did not appear.
Because the unredacted I-130 petition conclusively refuted the

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No. 24-2320 3
factual basis of Muthana’s claims, the judge entered judgment
for the defendants.
Muthana appealed; but like his approach in the district
court, his perfunctory appellate brief does not address the
dispositive effect of the unredacted I-130. By failing to offer
any meaningful argument—either in the district court or on
appeal—he has doubly waived any challenge to the
judgment. We affirm.
I. Background
This case comes to us from a judgment on the pleadings,
so we draw the relevant background from the pleadings,
attached exhibits, and the procedural record. Mohamed
Muthana is a native of Yemen and became a U.S. citizen in
2001. In early 2002 he filed I-130 visa petitions on behalf of
several family members. An I-130 Petition for Alien Relative
begins the immigration process for family members of
U.S. citizens by establishing the petitioner’s U.S. citizenship
and a qualifying familial relationship between the petitioner
and the named beneficiary.
At issue here is Muthana’s I-130 petition naming Halimah
Yousef Saleh Muthana as the beneficiary. Filed at the United
States Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, on February 11, 2002, the
petition identifies Halimah as Muthana’s child by adoption
with a date of birth in 1994. Because of an apparent clerical
error, the petition was date-stamped February 11, 2012
(instead of 2002).
At the same time, Muthana also filed I-130 petitions for the
benefit of his wife, Hwaida Qasem—Halimah’s mother—and
the couple’s two young sons. The visa process included an
interview with a consular officer at the embassy. Muthana,

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4 No. 24-2320
Hwaida, and seven-year-old Halimah attended; it’s not clear
if the couple’s two sons were there too.
On September 26, 2002, the INS issued a notice of intent to
deny the petitions. The notice cited several indicators of fraud
based on the consular interview and documents Muthana and
Hwaida had submitted in connection with the petitions. The
agency gave Muthana a 90-day deadline to submit DNA
evidence and other documentation to establish the identities
and familial relationships of the beneficiaries. The notice was
mailed to Muthana at 4737 N. Kildare Avenue in Chicago.
However, Muthana’s first and middle names were
transposed: the notice was directed to “Mahmood Mohamed
Muthana” at the Kildare Avenue address.
Muthana did not respond to the notice, so on January 16,
2003, the petitions were denied. The agency mailed the denial
letter to Muthana at the same Kildare Avenue address.
Hwaida and the couple’s two sons eventually obtained
visas. In 2018 Hwaida became a U.S. citizen, and the couple’s
other children are now also citizens or lawful permanent
residents.
In the ensuing years, Muthana and Hwaida occasionally
made inquiries about the status of Halimah’s petition but
received no meaningful response. In 2019 they obtained
counsel and filed a request under the Freedom of Information
Act for records related to the petition. In 2021 the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”)—the
component agency within DHS that assumed the functions of
the INS when it dissolved in 2003—responded and produced
copies of (among other documents) the September 2002 notice

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No. 24-2320 5
of intent to deny the petitions and the January 2003 denial
letter.
In 2022 Muthana sued the DHS Secretary and other high-
ranking federal officials claiming that he never received these
notices because they were mistakenly addressed to
4737 N. Kildare Avenue, an address where he never lived. He
alleged that he lived at 4858 N. Kilbourn Street in Chicago
during the time in question. He asserted that the lack of notice
violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause and the
APA.1
Muthana’s suit sought to reopen his 2002 I-130 petition to
allow Halimah, now married with her own children, to seek
a family-based visa. Muthana attached a copy of the petition
as an exhibit to his complaint. Curiously, however, he masked
the part of the petition where he listed his address. As we’ve
noted, there is one more anomaly: the petition bears a file-
stamped date of February 11, 2012—an obvious clerical error,
as Muthana explained in his complaint. The complaint also
names Hwaida and Halimah as additional plaintiffs. They
raised no independent claims, so for simplicity we’ll continue
to refer to Muthana as the only plaintiff.
The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for failure
to state a claim and as time-barred under the six-year statute
of limitations. See F ED. R. C IV. P. 12(b)(6). Muthana responded
with an amended complaint containing the same allegations
as the first, but with additional contentions aimed at fending
off dismissal based on untimeliness. Importantly for our
1 He also alleged that requiring DNA evidence in connection with an I-130
petition violates the APA. Muthana has not pressed this claim on appeal,
so we consider it abandoned.

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6 No. 24-2320
purposes, Muthana repeated his allegations that he resided at
4858 N. Kilbourn Street at the relevant time and never lived at
4737 N. Kildare Avenue. Like his original complaint, he
attached a copy of the I-130 petition he had filed on Halimah’s
behalf—but once again with the address portion redacted.
And he again explained that the 2012 date stamp was an
obvious clerical error, pointing out that various details on the
face of the petition—notably, the case identification number
and the issuing agency (the INS)—showed that he had indeed
filed it in 2002. (As we’ve noted, the INS was dissolved in
2003.)
The defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint,
reasserting the arguments in their previous motion that the
suit was time-barred and that the allegations failed to state a
claim. The district judge denied the motion, reasoning that the
amended complaint plausibly supported the application of
the discovery rule or equitable tolling and that the allegations
were otherwise sufficient to survive dismissal.
The defendants then filed an answer and moved for
judgment on the pleadings. See id. R. 12(c). They attached an
unredacted copy of the I-130 petition Muthana had filed in
February 2002 for Halimah’s benefit. The unredacted petition
shows that Muthana had in fact listed 4737 N. Kildare Avenue
as his address, confirming that the INS’s notices had not been
misdirected but rather had been sent to the address that
Muthana himself had provided. Because the unredacted I-130
defeated the key factual premise of Muthana’s claims, the
defendants argued that they were entitled to judgment as a
matter of law.
Muthana filed a cursory written response to the motion,
but it was a confusing jumble and did not meaningfully

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No. 24-2320 7
engage with the dispositive effect of the unredacted I-130.
Although he had alleged in both versions of his complaint
that he filed the I-130 petition for Halimah’s benefit in 2002
and that the 2012 date stamp was an obvious clerical error,
Muthana now hinted—bizarrely—that the 2012 date stamp
showed that the petition was unreliable. He also submitted a
photograph of a single page of what he claimed was a Form
DS-230—an Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien
Registration—that he said he had filed for the benefit of his
wife in 2002. In the box asking the applicant to list all
residential addresses during the last five years, the
4858 N. Kilbourn address appeared, followed by a date range
of January 1997 to the “present.” This document, Muthana
insisted, showed that he resided at the Kilbourn address at the
time in question.
The district judge held a hearing on the motion, but
neither Muthana nor his counsel appeared. The judge
proceeded without them, and the defendants’ counsel
focused on two key documents: the unredacted I-130 petition
and the partial document that Muthana claimed was a DS-230
application he filed for his wife in 2002. As counsel explained,
the 2012 date stamp was unquestionably a clerical error and
the I-130 petition could be reliably dated to 2002—not only
because Muthana had acknowledged as much in both
versions of his complaint but also because the issuing agency,
the INS, had ceased to exist in 2003 and the case identification
number included 2002 as the filing year.
Turning to the photo of a single page of what Muthana
claimed was a 2002 DS-230 application, counsel explained
that this new exhibit was in fact Muthana’s own N-400
Application for Naturalization filed in 1999. That much was

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8 No. 24-2320
clear from the photo itself: indeed, the bottom left corner
identified the document as a Form N-400. So the photo did
not cast doubt on the Kildare Avenue address Muthana had
listed on the 2002 I-130 petition.
The judge agreed across the board but requested
additional confirmation in the form of an affidavit from an
agency official. The judge explained that she would grant the
government’s motion for judgment on the pleadings if the
affidavit was sufficient, absent an objection from Muthana.
The judge entered a minute order explaining her ruling. After
the hearing, Muthana’s counsel contacted the court and was
referred to the judge’s minute order.
Two weeks later the government filed an affidavit from a
USCIS official who attested that the I-130 petition submitted
with the defendants’ answer and motion was in fact
Muthana’s 2002 petition and explained why the 2012 date
stamp was a clerical error. The affidavit also confirmed that
the exhibit Muthana had submitted with his response to the
motion was a photo of a page from his own Form N-400 filed
in 1999—not a 2002 DS-230 Form for the benefit of his wife, as
he had claimed.
Muthana did not respond. Finding the affidavit sufficient,
and with no objection from Muthana, the judge granted the
motion for judgment on the pleadings and entered judgment
for the defendants.
II. Discussion
We review a judgment on the pleadings de novo. Federated
Mut. Ins. Co. v. Coyle Mech. Supply Inc., 983 F.3d 307, 313 (7th
Cir. 2020). “The only difference between a motion for
judgment on the pleadings and a motion to dismiss is timing,”

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No. 24-2320 9
id., so the standards for evaluating a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to
dismiss also govern a Rule 12(c) motion for judgment on the
pleadings, Adams v. City of Indianapolis, 742 F.3d 720, 727–28
(7th Cir. 2014). Judgment on the pleadings is appropriate if
there are no material issues of fact to be resolved and the
moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
Federated Mut. Ins. Co., 983 F.3d at 313.
The court’s review of a motion to dismiss—and by
extension, a motion for judgment on the pleadings—includes
“not only the complaint itself, but also documents attached to
the complaint, documents that are critical to the complaint
and referred to in it, and information that is subject to proper
judicial notice.” Phillips v. Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 714 F.3d
1017, 1019–20 (7th Cir. 2013) (quotation omitted). When an
exhibit is incorporated into the pleadings, the court is “not
bound to accept the pleader’s allegations as to the effect of the
exhibit, but can independently examine the document.” Burke
v. 401 N. Wabash Venture, LLC, 714 F.3d 501, 505 (7th Cir. 2013)
(quotation omitted).
This case centers on Muthana’s allegation that he never
received the INS’s notice of intent to deny his I-130 petition or
the later denial letter because the agency mistakenly
addressed it to 4737 N. Kildare Avenue, an address where he
claimed he never lived. He frames this alleged lack of notice
as a violation of due process and the APA.
The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process requires
only notice that is “reasonably calculated” to reach the
recipient. Ho v. Donovan, 569 F.3d 677, 680 (7th Cir. 2009)
(quoting Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306,
314 (1950)). In the context of immigration proceedings, this
requires “only that the government attempt to deliver notice

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10 No. 24-2320
to the last address provided” by the applicant seeking benefits
or relief. Patel v. Holder, 563 F.3d 565, 568 (7th Cir. 2009).
Accordingly, this case turns on whether Muthana
provided the Kildare Avenue address to the INS. He did. As
the district judge concluded, Muthana’s unredacted I-130
petition and the supporting affidavit from the USCIS official
conclusively establish that Muthana indeed provided the
Kildare Avenue address to the INS.
Muthana has not meaningfully contested the point, either
in the district court or on appeal. His written response to the
defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings was
perfunctory and did not engage with the conclusive effect of
his unredacted I-130 petition. He skipped the hearing on the
motion and neither responded to the judge’s minute entry nor
objected to the supplemental affidavit from the USCIS official.
His approach to this appeal has been similarly
nonresponsive. He has not addressed the judge’s conclusion
that the unredacted I-130 decisively refutes his key factual
premise. He has not developed a meaningful argument on his
due-process claim and has not addressed the substance of the
APA claim at all. Instead, he offers only a highly generalized
argument that a “multitude” of unidentified factual questions
remain and accuses the judge of ruling prematurely,
depriving him of discovery. This complete lack of
engagement constitutes waiver. See Bradley v. Village of
University Park, 59 F.4th 887, 897 (7th Cir. 2023).
To the extent that this appeal can be generously construed
as an underdeveloped procedural objection to the judge’s
approach to the Rule 12(c) motion, it’s a nonstarter. It’s true
that the judge considered two documents that were not part

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No. 24-2320 11
of Muthana’s complaint: the unredacted copy of his I-130
petition and the affidavit from the USCIS official. When a
party presents matters outside the pleadings on a
Rule 12(b)(6) or Rule 12(c) motion, the judge ordinarily
should treat the motion as one for summary judgment and
permit a reasonable opportunity to present other material.
F ED. R. C IV. P. 12(d); Federated Mut. Ins. Co., 983 F.3d at 313.
But that rule does not apply here for two reasons.
First, as we’ve explained, Muthana waived any procedural
challenge to the judge’s actions by failing to object in the
district court and again by failing to adequately develop a
procedural argument on appeal. See Bradley, 59 F.4th at 897.
Second, the judge was entitled to consider these two
documents in any event. Starting with the unredacted I-130: it
was simply a more complete version of the same document
that Muthana himself had attached to his complaint. Under
the incorporation-by-reference doctrine, a court may consider
authentic documents not attached to a complaint so long as
they are referenced in it and are central to the plaintiff’s claim.
Fin. Fiduciaries, LLC v. Gannett Co., 46 F.4th 654, 663 (7th Cir.
2022). To qualify, the documents must be indisputably
authentic, either because the plaintiff concedes as much, id.,
or because their authenticity is “not in doubt,” Chemetall
GMBH v. ZR Energy, Inc., 320 F.3d 714, 718 n.4 (7th Cir. 2003).
Although this principle is typically invoked when a
plaintiff completely omits a document that undermines his
case, see Fin. Fiduciaries, LLC, 46 F.4th at 663, it applies with
equal force when the plaintiff instead attaches and
incorporates only a partial or truncated version of a key
document. In the latter situation, we’ve held that the court
may consider a complete version of the document submitted

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12 No. 24-2320
in response. Rosenblum v. Travelbyus.com Ltd., 299 F.3d 657,
661–62 (7th Cir. 2002) (when the plaintiff’s complaint attached
only part of a contract, the court could consider the whole
contract); 188 LLC v. Trinity Indus., Inc., 300 F.3d 730, 735 (7th
Cir. 2002) (same for a contract referenced only in part); Wright
v. Associated Ins. Cos., 29 F.3d 1244, 1248 (7th Cir. 1994) (same).
Just as a plaintiff may not skirt an adverse judgment by
“failing to attach to his complaint a document that prove[s]
his claim has no merit,” Brownmark Films, LLC v. Comedy
Partners, 682 F.3d 687, 690 (7th Cir. 2012) (alteration in
original) (quotation omitted), so too, he cannot achieve the
same result by presenting only a partial version of the
document. Omissions and partial omissions are treated the
same.
To recap, Muthana attached a redacted version of his I-130
petition to his complaint, masking the address field—a critical
part of the document given the nature of his claims. Because
the government’s version of the document simply filled that
gap, the district judge was entitled to consider it. There’s no
reason to doubt the authenticity of the unredacted I-130.
Notwithstanding Muthana’s bizarre shift in position later in
the litigation, he confirmed in his initial and amended
complaints that he filed the petition in 2002 and attributed the
2012 date stamp to a clerical error. We may hold Muthana to
his initial assertion. See Moran v. Calumet City, 54 F.4th 483,
494 (7th Cir. 2022). Moreover, by not challenging the
authenticity of the unredacted I-130 on appeal, he has
effectively conceded the point.
As for the USCIS affidavit, district courts may consider
affidavits to confirm the authenticity of documents subject to
the incorporation-by-reference doctrine. Wright, 29 F.3d at

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No. 24-2320 13
1248. We’ve also held that it’s permissible to consider an
affidavit that merely confirms “fact[s] obviously known to the
district court.” Winterland Concessions Co. v. Trela, 735 F.2d
257, 260 n.1 (7th Cir. 1984). This affidavit did just that. It
introduced no new information and simply confirmed what
the record already made plain: (1) the I-130 at the heart of this
case was filed in 2002; and (2) the exhibit Muthana submitted
to try to avert an adverse judgment was a photo of a single
page in his own 1999 naturalization application, not a
supposed 2002 DS-230 Form for the benefit of his wife, as he
claimed.
Accordingly, the judge properly granted the defendants’
motion for judgment on the pleadings.
A FFIRMED

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