Mahamadu Gumaneh v. Attorney General of the United States

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 08-3756
MAHAMADU GUMANEH,
Petitioner
v.
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES,
Respondent
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
BIA No. A78-674-951
(U.S. Immigration Judge: Honorable Eugene Pugliese)
Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
October 14, 2009
Before: SCIRICA, Chief Judge, CHAGARES and ALDISERT, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: October 16, 2009)
OPINION OF THE COURT
PER CURIAM.
Mahamadu Gumaneh, a native and citizen of Sierra Leone, arrived in the United
States without inspection. In 2000, Gumaneh filed an affirmative application for asylum,
withholding of removal, and relief under the United Nations Convention Against Torture
(“CAT”). He claimed that he was persecuted on account of imputed ethnicity; Gumaneh

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1
In his asylum application, Gumaneh stated that he was persecuted on account of his
political opinion, see Administrative Record (“A.R.”) 185, but later clarified that his
applications for relief were based on imputed ethnicity. See A.R. 10.
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belongs to the Soninke ethnic group but lived in an area that was inhabited primarily by
Mandingo. 1 Gumaneh alleged that he witnessed his parents and sister being shot and
killed when Revolutionary United Front (“RUF”) rebels attacked his village on June 15,
1999. At the time, Gumaneh was captured and taken to the rebel’s camp, where he was
held for five days and assaulted (he was dragged along the floor, his front teeth were
knocked out, and he was stabbed in the right wrist). Gumaneh was able to escape when
the rebels passed out from drinking alcohol and taking drugs. In May 2004, Gumaneh
was charged with removability for entering the United States without being admitted or
paroled. See Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) § 212(a)(6)(A)(i) [8 U.S.C.
§ 1182(a)(6)(A)(i)].
The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) concluded that Gumaneh was credible but denied his
applications on the basis that he failed to demonstrate that he was persecuted on account
of his imputed ethnicity. The IJ viewed the June 15, 1999, “incident as being exactly
what the respondent repeatedly described it to be, an effort to get more people to join the
rebel group, coupled with a certain amount of wanton, senseless, crazy violence directed
at civilians for no particular reason at all except perhaps that the people who were doing
these things were drunk.” The IJ also concluded that Gumaneh did not have a well-
founded fear of future persecution because the State Department County Report in the

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record indicated that the civil conflict in Sierra Leone ended in 2002. Finally, the IJ
found that Gumaneh had not established that he was likely to be tortured.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissed Gumaneh’s appeal. It
agreed that:
[w]hile the rebels may have been influenced to a small degree by
ethnicity, it appears that their major motivation was to recruit new
members. In other words, youth such as [Gumaneh] were targeted
regardless of their ethnicity. The fact that the respondent happened to live
in a town where an ethnic group of interest to the rebels resided does not
automatically render him a refugee as defined by the Act. . . . Moreover,
the respondent’s mere inclination that the rebels were motivated by
ethnicity is insufficient to support a mixed motive finding.
The Board also concluded that Gumaneh had not meet his burden of proving that he has a
well-founded fear of harm, that he was entitled to withholding of removal, or that he was
qualified for CAT relief. Gumaneh filed a timely petition for review
Where the BIA issues its own decision on the merits, we review its decision and
not that of the IJ. See Kayembe v. Ashcroft, 334 F.3d 231, 234 (3d Cir. 2003). To be
granted asylum as a refugee, an applicant must establish that he is unable to return to his
homeland “because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of
race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
INA § 101(a)(42) [8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)]. Asylum relief may be available for aliens
who were persecuted, or fear persecution, based on imputed grounds (e.g., where one is
thought to be of a particular ethnicity or hold particular political opinions). See Singh v.
Gonzales, 406 F.3d 191, 196 (3d Cir. 2005). In addition, an asylum applicant need not

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2
Because Gumaneh applied for asylum before May 11, 2005, he is not subject to a
provision in the REAL ID Act of 2005 that requires an alien applying for asylum in a
mixed motive case, to show “that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular
social group, or political opinion was or will be at least one central reason” for the alleged
persecution. See INA § 208(b)(1)(B)(i) [8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i)].
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demonstrate that the protected ground was the exclusive motivation behind the alleged
persecution. Where an alien asserts more than one possible motive for the alleged
persecution, one of which is a protected basis and others not, “an applicant need only
show that his or her persecution was caused ‘at least in part’ by membership in a
protected group.” 2 Ndayshimiye v. Att’y Gen., 557 F.3d 124, 129 (3d Cir. 2009). We
review the BIA’s finding of a lack of connection between Gumaneh’s imputed ethnicity
and his mistreatment by the rebels for substantial evidence. See Gomez-Zuluaga v. Att’y
Gen., 527 F.3d 330, 344-45 (3d Cir. 2008).
In his asylum application, filed in 2000, Gumaneh indicated that he was seeking
asylum based on his political opinion. See Administrative Record (“A.R.”), 185. He
stated that the “basis for my claim is principally the life threatening and brutal war going
on in my country for the past nine years.” Id. at 184. He further noted that the “rebels are
killing innocent people every day whether you support them or not . . . .” Id. at 186. In
an affidavit prepared four years later, Gumaneh stated, without explanation, that he is
seeking “political asylum.” Id. at 130. In that affidavit, in statements made to an Asylum
Officer, and in his testimony before the IJ, Gumaneh claimed that the rebels attacked his
village with the intent of recruiting young men to join their cause. Id. at 87-88, 132, 178.

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In addition, the BIA properly affirmed the IJ’s conclusion that Gumaneh did not have
a well-founded fear of future persecution because of changes in Sierra Leone. According
to the State Department Country Report for 2005, the civil war ended in 2002, the
government asserted control over the entire country, and RUF members were indicted by
a war crimes tribunal. See Kaita v. Att’y Gen., 522 F.3d 288, 301 (3d Cir. 2008) (noting,
in the context of a CAT claim, that the 2006 Country Report “suggests that, although
there are still some serious problems in many areas of Sierra Leone, the country
conditions have greatly improved.”).
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When asked on direct examination whether the rebels were targeting any particular ethnic
group, Gumaneh responded,
[t]he area that we was living, so the head of the government of Sierra
Leone, his ethnic is Mandingo, . . . so when they attack our village, in their
minds, since we are living with the Mandingo in Peyama, so they thought
we are Mandingo ethnics too and particularly they go really after
Mandingos . . . .
Id. at 88.
Gumaneh’s experiences certainly rise to the level of persecution. See Camara v.
Att’y Gen., – F.3d –, 2009 WL 2836437, at *7 (3d Cir. Sept. 4, 2009) (noting “the near
obviousness of the proposition that a person who has directly witnessed a brutal assault
on a family member has experienced so devastating a blow as to rise to the level of
persecution”). Nevertheless, we are convinced that the evidence does not compel the
conclusion that such persecution occurred on account of a protected ground. 3 The
testimony quoted above is the only suggestion in the record that the rebels were motivated
by Gumaneh’s imputed ethnicity. Cf. Amanfi v. Ashcroft, 328 F.3d 719, 727 (3d Cir.
2003) (stating that the “mention of religion in the fabric of the story is insufficient to
establish a persecution claim.”). All the other evidence points to the conclusion that the

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rebels were indiscriminately attacking the village and seeking to recruit young men, not
targeting any particular ethnic group. Indeed, Gumaneh asserted that the rebels
“descended upon our peaceful town with the intent of utter destruction,” that they “went
house to house” attacking the villagers, and that “[n]ot a word was uttered to us” by the
rebels. See A.R. 131. Of course, “generalized lawlessness and violence between diverse
populations” will not support relief. Abdille v. Ashcroft, 242 F.3d 477, 494-95 (3d Cir.
2001). To the extent the rebels sought to recruit Gumaneh, those efforts alone are
insufficient to compel a finding of persecution based on a protected ground. See
Velasquez-Valencia v. INS, 244 F.3d 48, 50-51 (1st Cir. 2001) (holding that alien was not
entitled to asylum based on evidence that Guatemalan guerillas sought to recruit him to
their side in a civil war because there was no indication that his political beliefs had
anything to do with efforts to recruit him).
Because Gumaneh cannot satisfy the asylum standard, he cannot satisfy the more
difficult withholding of removal standard. See Zubeda v. Ashcroft, 333 F.3d 463, 469-70
(3d Cir. 2003). Additionally, while a person seeking protection under the CAT need not
prove that he was persecuted due to any protected status, any possibility of torture in this
case appears to be negated by the improved country conditions in Sierra Leone. See
Kaita, 522 F.3d at 300-01.
For the foregoing reasons, we will deny the petition for review.

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