Tambadou v. Gonzales

Cheikh Tambadou (plaintiff) was a Mauritania native of Soninke ethnicity who applied for asylum in the United States. Tambadou testified that Mauritanians of Soninke ethnicity were hated by the Maurs, Mauritania’s dominant ethnic group, because of their ancestry and their skin color. When Tambadou was 15 years old, six officers stopped at a field where Tambadou and his father and brother worked and accused them of being from Senegal rather than being native Mauritanians. When Tambadou’s father presented Tambadou’s birth certificate, the officers tore it up and took Tambadou to jail, where he was detained and beaten for two months until he eventually acquiesced that he was Senegalese. The officers then took Tambadou and other detainees from whom the officers elicited similar confessions to a riverbank, where they were told to cross into Senegal or be killed. The officers fired shots at the detainees as they crossed, with one shot piercing Tambadou’s canoe. Tambadou struck his head, and the canoe overturned. Tambadou was hospitalized in Senegal for two months until he was taken to a refugee camp. Tambadou remained in the refugee camp for five years before he left and eventually went to the United States (defendant), where he applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and voluntary departure. An immigration judge denied all relief, and in 2002, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) denied Tambadou’s appeal on the grounds that Tambadou no longer had a fear of future persecution in Mauritania due to a fundamental change in country conditions. The BIA relied almost completely on a country report from the United States State Department that had described conditions in Mauritania in 1996. The report indicated that the government in Mauritania was cooperating with humanitarian organizations in aiding thousands of people who had been expelled to Senegal in their return to Mauritania. However, the State Department acknowledged that slavery still existed in Mauritania. Tambadou testified that some Afro-Mauritanians who had returned to Mauritania after being repatriated were killed. Tambadou also testified regarding continued human-rights abuses of the Mauritanian government and the lack of recourse for victims. Nevertheless, the BIA deferred to the general comments in the country report, in disregard of Tambadou’s contrary evidence and without performing an individualized analysis. Tambadou sought review.