523 F.3d 784 (7th Cir. 2008), 06-3178, Mitondo v. Mukasey

Docket Nº:06-3178
Citation:523 F.3d 784
Party Name:Mpoyi MITONDO, Petitioner, v. Michael B. MUKASEY, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent.
Case Date:April 24, 2008

Page 784

523 F.3d 784 (7th Cir. 2008)

Mpoyi MITONDO, Petitioner,



No. 06-3178

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

April 24, 2008

Argued Aug. 8, 2007.

Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals

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Shannon M. Shepherd (argued), Azulay, Horn & Seiden, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.

Siu Ping Wong, Wendy Benner-Leon (argued), Department of Justice Civil Division, Immigration Litigation, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and COFFEY and MANION, Circuit Judges.


Mpoyi Mitondo, a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997), arrived in the United States from Scotland bearing a French passport. Citizens of France do not need visas to enter the United States, and Mitondo did not have one.

Only cursory checks are made of persons who carry the passports of nations participating in the visa-waiver program. But one of the checks is for the passport's legitimacy, and Mitondo was detained because a blank bearing the number of the passport he presented had been stolen. He soon confessed that the passport was not his, and that he is not French. His request to stay in the United States has been processed under the "asylum-only"

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approach applicable to those who claim entitlement to enter without visas. Before arriving, Mitondo had waived any ground other than asylum for remaining in the United States beyond 90 days. See 8 U.S.C. §1187(b)(2); 8 C.F.R. §217.4(a)(1).

Mitondo contends that he has been persecuted on account of his politics. He supports the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social, or UDPS), which is on the outs with the ruling People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy. UDPS is a recognized party with representatives in the legislature, and its leader Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba served three stints as Prime Minister. But supporters of the UDPS sometimes receive rough handling from the police during political demonstrations. Mitondo testified that he endured ghastly treatment during May 2005, after Joseph Kabila, Congo's President, postponed scheduled elections. The UDPS called a general strike, and Mitondo says that during a demonstration in Mbuji-Mayi he was arrested, thrown into a filthy cell where his hands were tied behind his back and a hood kept over his head, beaten four times, and then sent to the fields for forced labor--from which he escaped after two weeks. Mitondo met Roman Catholic priests who helped him to escape to Zambia, where a second group of priests provided him with tickets and (false) documentation that enabled him to reach Glasgow, receive the stolen passport, and enter the United States equipped with a voucher for prepaid stay at a youth hostel in Chicago.

The immigration judge accepted Mitondo's claim to membership in the UDPS (a claim backed up by the party's records and affidavits from its officials) but was skeptical about the story of his detention and beatings in May 2005. The voucher had been issued in Glasgow to a "V. Mitondo," the same name on the passport, before Mitondo had escaped from his captors and thus before he could have met the priests--about whom he has supplied no details. Asked to explain how this could be so, Mitondo replied: "I don't know how they arranged these travel documents or how they arranged any, any of this."

After a six-week continuation so that both sides could gather additional evidence, Mitondo's memory improved. Now he testified that the person in Glasgow who gave him the...

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