Case Explained: UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT ALA RAHIM YONAN v. TODD BLANCHE, Attorney General ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Filed: 2026-08-13 The Sixth Circuit granted the petition for review, vacated the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision, and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with the court’s opinion. The court held that the BIA applied an incorrect legal standard when denying Yonan’s third motion to reopen his removal proceedings based on changed country conditions under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). While the BIA correctly identified the governing rule requiring a comparison of country conditions at the time of the original merits hearing versus the time of the motion, it erroneously compared Yonan’s evidence of deteriorating conditions in Iraq to periods post-dating his 2008 merits hearing rather than to the baseline conditions existing in 2008. Specifically, the BIA evaluated the materiality of the PMF’s political ascendancy and the rescission of a decree recognizing the Chaldean Patriarch by comparing them to events in the mid-2010s or early 2020s, rather than determining if these factors represented a material escalation compared to the state of affairs in 2008. Because the BIA’s error prevented a proper assessment of whether conditions had materially changed since Yonan’s original hearing, and because the record suggests the PMF presents a distinct risk profile compared to militias active in 2008, the court found the error was not harmless. Consequently, the case is remanded to the BIA to reconsider the motion using the correct evidentiary comparator of country conditions as they existed at the time of the original merits hearing. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.