Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Pablo Alonso Morales, his partner Ana Reyes Martinez, and her two sons, all citizens of Mexico, petitioned the Ninth Circuit to review a Board of Immigration Appeals decision dismissing their appeal from an immigration judge's denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture protection. They claimed harm as members of a particular social group "consisting of family," meaning relatives of Alonso Morales who received an extortion threat and relatives of Reyes Martinez who had been harmed.
The evidence involved several incidents. Alonso Morales testified that cartel members targeted him for extortion because they knew he had recently received a retirement bonus. He also testified that cartel members beat his brother-in-law because they believed the man was affiliated with a different cartel. Reyes Martinez testified that cartel members killed her sister's partner, but she did not know why. The cartel members had first come into contact with the petitioners while searching for Reyes Martinez's brother at their home. The immigration judge found the harm was motivated by theft or suspected ties to a rival group rather than family connections, and found any risk of future torture speculative because petitioners had not been physically harmed in Mexico. The Board upheld those findings.
The Court’s Holding
The panel denied the petition. It reviewed the agency's factual findings, including findings about a persecutor's motive, for substantial evidence and concluded the record did not compel a contrary result on nexus. Asylum requires that a protected ground be one central reason for the persecution, and withholding requires that it be a reason. The court explained that nexus addresses the persecutor's motive for harming the victim, not the causal chain that brought persecutor and victim into contact. Petitioners' relationship to Reyes Martinez's brother may explain why cartel members came to the home, threatened them, and destroyed some furniture. But petitioners did not refer to that incident in the persecution sections of their Board brief, and the court declined to credit a different justification than the one raised before the Board.
For the incidents petitioners did rely on, the extortion, the beating, and the killing, the court assumed without deciding that they amounted to past persecution. It still found no evidence that the perpetrators were motivated by family membership. The agency had found theft or random violence, which bears no nexus to a protected ground. The Board also applied the correct standards: de novo review of whether motives satisfy the legal nexus test, and clear-error review of the underlying findings about what the motives were. Because the Board credited a finding that the cartel members acted solely out of criminality, no mixed-motive analysis was required. Given that dispositive finding, the agency did not err in declining to reach past persecution or internal relocation.
On the Convention Against Torture claim, the court held the Board did not err in reviewing the immigration judge's findings about the likelihood of torture for clear error. An applicant must show it is more likely than not that he will face a particularized, non-speculative risk of torture, and a speculative fear is not enough. Petitioners did not argue that the speculative-risk conclusion lacked substantial evidence. They argued only that the Board used the wrong standard of review, and the court rejected that argument.
Key Takeaways
- Nexus turns on why the persecutor inflicted harm, not on how the persecutor and victim came into contact, so a cartel's initial search for a relative does not by itself tie later harm to family membership.
- Harm that the agency attributes, on substantial evidence, to theft, suspected rival-cartel affiliation, or random violence lacks a nexus to a protected ground, and no mixed-motive analysis is needed when no protected motive is shown.
- A petitioner who relies before the Ninth Circuit on a theory not developed in the relevant sections of the Board brief risks having that argument disregarded.
- A Convention Against Torture claimant must show a particularized, non-speculative risk of torture, and challenging only the Board's standard of review, without contesting the supporting evidence, will not carry a petition.
Why It Matters
This is an unpublished memorandum disposition. It is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3, so it illustrates how the court applies existing nexus and standard-of-review authority to cartel-extortion claims rather than establishing new law.
The petition was denied, so the Board's order stands and the removal-related denial of relief is left in place. The court did not decide the validity of the claimed family-based social group, and it did not reach past persecution or internal relocation. It resolved the case on the absence of nexus and, for torture protection, on the speculative nature of the feared harm.