Grigoryan

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Grigoryan was born in Armenia of mixed ethnicity. Her father was Armenian and her mother was Turkish. She entered the United States in 1999 and applied for asylum. She was represented by attorney Walter Burrier. The immigration judge (“IJ”) assumed that Grigoryan was credible, but found that she did not establish that she was persecuted on account of a protected ground. Grigoryan claimed that she was perse- cuted and that she had a well-founded fear on account of her ethnicity.

In her asylum affidavit Grigoryan declared that she and her parents were constantly harassed by Armenians because her mother was Turkish. After her father’s death, she and her mother and brother moved to Azerbaijan to live near her mother’s relatives. In 1988, the war erupted in Azerbaijan and, because she was Armenian, she was harassed, beaten, and jailed. She and her husband and children fled to Russia. In 1992, they returned to Armenia and struggled to survive because of the hostility Armenians held against them because they were from Azerbaijan.

In 1994, Grigoryan became president of an Armenian aid organization that assisted soldiers wounded in the war between Armenia…