PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 22-1368

HUSSEIN AHMED MOUNS,

Petitioner,

v.

MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General,

Respondent.

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

Argued: October 25, 2023 Decided: August 28, 2024

Before KING and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and Joseph R. GOODWIN, United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.

Petition granted by published opinion. Judge King wrote the opinion, in which Judge Gregory and Judge Goodwin joined.

ARGUED: Daniel Aaron Diskin, GARFIELD LAW GROUP, PC, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Jessica Eden Burns, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: David Garfield, GARFIELD LAW GROUP, PC, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Brian Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Leslie McKay, Senior Litigation Counsel, John F. Stanton, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. USCA4 Appeal: 22-1368 Doc: 40 Filed: 08/28/2024 Pg: 2 of 31

KING, Circuit Judge:

The petitioner in this immigration matter, Hussein Ahmed Mouns, seeks our review

of the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the “BIA”) denying reconsideration

of its earlier denial of Mouns’s motion to reopen his proceedings. In requesting the BIA’s

reconsideration, Mouns argued that the BIA had committed legal error in denying the

motion to reopen by utilizing the reopening standard devised for cases presenting special,

adverse considerations by In re Coelho, 20 I. & N. Dec. 464, 473 (BIA 1992) (requiring

the movant to show that “the new evidence offered would likely change the result in the

case”), rather than the generally applicable and less burdensome standard endorsed by In

re L-O-G-, 21 I. & N. Dec. 413, 418-20 (BIA 1996) (allowing a showing of “reasonable

likelihood”). Without addressing or even acknowledging L-O-G- or the “reasonable

likelihood” standard, the BIA summarily declared the Coelho standard to be applicable and

denied reconsideration. Because the BIA flouted its own precedents by ratifying the use

of the Coelho standard, we grant Mouns’s petition for review, vacate the BIA’s decision

denying reconsideration, and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Mouns is a native of Ethiopia and citizen of Yemen who has been in the United

States since 1996. He filed an application in 1997 for asylum and withholding of removal,

which was denied by an immigration judge (an “IJ”) in 1999, with affirmance from the

BIA in 2002. Thereafter, Mouns filed with the BIA a pair of motions in 2003 and 2004 to

reopen his proceedings, by which he sought to pursue asylum, withholding of removal, and

2 USCA4 Appeal: 22-1368 Doc: 40 Filed: 08/28/2024 Pg: 3 of 31

the previously unavailable relief of protection under the Convention Against Torture (the

“CAT”). Those motions were denied by the BIA in, respectively, 2003 and 2005. Mouns

did not petition this Court or another court of appeals for review of any of the BIA’s adverse

decisions. Although Mouns was thereby expected to return to Yemen, he remained in the

United States. 1

In 2020, Mouns filed with the BIA

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