good morning welcome to the th circuit we are pleased to have judge barbara rothstein of the just record here in seattle sitting with us today we will take the cases in the order they appear on the calendar a s decision the st one is the political opinion and how the board came to that conclusion and the nd one is the nexus issue and how we came to the conclusion of whether our client was attacked on on account of a political opinion starting with the political opinion claim there's two points that i want to highlight for the court st the board of immigration appeals and the immigration judge characterized his political opinion as just refusing a job offer and petition to respect he didn't yes right so aren't we bound by the hearing not to get ration know your honors and for two reasons i'm sorry i want to know your honor and for two reasons st it is common practice in the immigration courts that when a declaration is submitted then the testimony is there to support and supplement the rest of the application the rest of the evidence certainly the department of homeland security could have used that to try to discredit his testimony saying you said it in the declaration one using it now so but that wasn't discredited and expression of the political opinion they cite the transcript and they also cite the exhibit and the exhibit was his declaration and so the b a a used both the exhibit his declaration and the transcript which they specifically cite to it in their decision in order to position is that he did more than just refuse a job offer when he made his political opinion because of the statements he made but even if we're just looking at refusing a job offer the board of the nation appeals conclusion that it cannot be a political opinion is incorrect  because the the board essentially makes a blanket rule saying if you decline a job offer if there's nothing else but defining a job offer it cannot be a political opinion and it cites levy and grab a for that proposition and that that doesn't say that the way that it was expressed cannot be a categorical nonpolitical opinion and in fact we see we can think of situations where a political opinion would be expressed in under the board's rule it would still be denied for example if we have some high political figure who says i will give you this job offer if you you know as long as you work with our ideology and follow the the agenda that we have politically and someone says no offer is what makes it not a political opinion all the other factors that came with the refusal didn't seem to matter to the board they just said refusal of a job offer there's nothing else it's not a political opinion now the board could have explained other factors of what did happen are other components that the board could have relied on like graba and i take your point your honour's point about you know he didn't say you have to follow our agenda and so in what way would this decline in this political opinion would be a political opinion under this court's precedent and i think gravel is good for that because what robert says is that when you express the political expression that you're making it has to be towards the government and toward a larger institution it can't just be  corrupt police officer who's trying to do something on the side for instance and in this case your honor we think that that meets this test because what the commander was trying to do is he was giving him a job offer and in his testimony and isn't that the decoration he said you know we'll give you a uniform we'll give you a gun you can start working as a police officer now there's so much that needs to happen in order for someone to have all of that that it is inextricably put together it's intertwined with government function to give someone a uniform to give someone a gun to have someone work these public functions of high public trust it would be as if someone says i will make you a judge and all you have now qualify for any of it and i will give you this position and you would publicly behold yourself out as a judge that is just not a single job offer there's so much into workings that must happen without the how of that government position plus the fact that he learned never did get the job afterward right your honor and i think that really didn't say that it had anything to do with what the commander they didn't really say anything about that the threatening phone calls the fact that the only other place that the petitioner said that the his four number one former was listed was the application is similar to the police academy that it was unlisted anywhere else and so looking at those individual e the immigration judge said in the agreed that because there was no direct evidence of anything relating to the but they said on this record your client is basically just speculating as to the connection and i guess i'm not sure what is it that you would point to to to say that they're not permitted on this record to reach that conclusion yes i would rely on cases like the low so were it looks court is bound by that but the one thing that the board did not address in the immigration just in i was just was the very suspicious timing that happened with all of this he had no problems before all of this and it just so happens that when's he tells the police commander no then also he gets beat up his father starts having threatening phone calls his father was beat up why wouldn't if in fact there was the connection why wouldn't there have been some indication from the pool when we're talking about political corruption in a political political a political opinion thing there is incentive and motivation for the government to not show their hand and say hey we're actually doing this because of the corrupt motive if it would have to be known that it was the government who was doing this or you know what chavez if you don't come along with us to want to do this or even if it was the police who are doing it they were still doing it you know as part of their overall criminality not because they were i would disagree with the with the premise that they were doing it to try to induce him and he did say that the reason i'm not doing it is because of the morals of the police and and that and that the the commander was upset by it as he describe it so our our position is that it was done to punish it for his statements and so as long as the punishment is being carried out and the government isn't made aware that this punishment is being carried out then you know that seems to be the larger purpose  mention that the threats that end mentioned the path that they the father was later her looking with are substantial evidence supports a finding that there is he was not persecuted on account of a political opinion good morning i may it please the court i'm lori warlick and i'm here on behalf of the united states attorney general the course deny this petition for review for many of the reasons the court has already referred to as you answer my question about whether something that's in the declaration but not said at the hearing is part of the record in this case for our purposes horizons and respectfully i believe it is part of the record and it is so the fact that you didn't say it the hearing doesn't that it only matters insofar as you can see that there although there is no adverse credibility to terminations here when there is testifying and he speaks to certain things that are different from the declaration or at least sort of related to but not exactly i it's not for us to go saying well what's in the declaration is is not to be taken into account i mean if it's otherwise would be a it isn't true that's not up to us well i would feel that when you're looking at the evidence to determine whether that that the question of adverse credibility and as you referred to like comparing a declaration to testimony to see if it's whether the person is intending to lie now the person may not have a proper recollection job saying i said our job and maybe the government could have done that the credibility determination or even on a discreet basis say that what was in the declaration was true i would say the the court has the authority and reviewing the reliability of evidence of just the weight of evidence to say whether the court finds the evidence compelled a certain conclusion you can look to say well and he's only mentioned once that he said something bad to be really say this recollection correct or no he's not trying to lie to us but is really like is this recollection correct well you're reviewing for compelling of it whether the evidence compels a particular conclusion and when you look at the evidence in the totality and include the fact that in the declaration at page four of three he suggests that the commander purely suggested you can do some good you can do some bad but in the transcript he said it was much less clear about the legality of what he was that's definitely at all what that be sufficient to demonstrate a political will not based on the fact that this is an aberrational corrupt officer and so him saying you can do some good you can do some bad without without him saying more single what do you mean i mean how to support the fact that this police force is pretty corrupt as my recollection was that half of that was fired about a year or so later well i'm not sure i mean that's not part of the record about it is part of the fact that the country conditions well  thereafter he ends up not being offered a job at the end of his career at the end of his term in the academy his father ends up getting beaten up don't you think that may be evidence that is more than just a sporadic group of officers well the only person that ever said anything to him that made him question whether someone was corrupt in the academy was the single commander or an instructor but he li d he's part of the police force right so when timing is the only thing when i reviewed for this case i said am i missing something and i'm missing some evidence that ties this attack on a taxi driver the petitioner and the subsequent desire for the  but phone calls demanding money and threatening him further to back to this academy and the only thing that supports the claim is the timing is the time you know it's not just the timing right it's the phone number the phone number of sources are well and that's you saying st of all that there was this robbery and potential kidnapping seem to be planned because there's this woman who's making text messages and so on so there was some kind of a conspiracy nd of all his saying the phone calls rd of all i understood him to be saying that the way in which the taxi was found right it suggests indicates that the police knew all along where that hacks he was but didn't tell and let him think that it had been found and therefore when with these plea people were calling him and telling him to come here and get the taxi  they were essentially had set that up because if they had told him right away that that what that had to taxi when they had the taxi that would have been a useless and never sewn well i want to believe i mean i think it's perfectly reasonable to think that there was a conspiracy to commit a carjacking or robbery of a cab driver but the question is whether that was at the behest of the commander who tried to go that it just said to the police in a sense that the police had a taxi all along right obviously an unfortunate circumstance i mean this is the timing is that is unfortunate i mean i would say that somewhat but bad things happen around the same time and you can't make the logical leap without some indication that they're connected and we have always said that the persecut statement service the best evidence of what they are doing and they never said anything i don't know he was asked about this twice during its testimony to non responsive answers and never said what the what the the people who were robbing him said to him for plainly they weren't saying we you know we can do this to you don't forget commander nacho as is watching anything like that do you really think they would go even further having offered him to join a conspiracy that of  corruption and he turns him down and he says you know you your bunch of bad guys and i don't want to have anything to do with you how much more are they going to say to him i think they would at least i mean there's no reason why we don't you know up is because you turned us down or at least  something about their power something about their authority because what's the point even to punish him why would it continue on a shame and keep him quiet well i mean he had never blown any whistle about it to begin with he never reported the invest them the commander statement to him at all anyway what would make them think that he would go do it now i mean the police the point another point i make is that when he came back and he told the academy i got robbed my car my cab was stolen and i will know that once they got his cab they may have been into need to kidnap him as well possibly for ransom but once he ran away they did not pursue him they took his car and then they continued to ask for money and as a side note that that sort of supports the theory that maybe the phone calls were from the same people who robbed him but that still doesn't mean they're from the law enforcement are there and they are asking him to come get the car they asked me come get the car they said we got your car you should come here he asked for more information apparently wouldn't give it to him he said i don't think this is language and we're not going to and then i said well then we're going to kill your family or you're going to give us fifty thousand back with them even though he didn't have a car i mean if they really want to the money they would have asked for the money that's not what they asked for they asked him to come there i have a feeling i mean based on all our understanding these kidnapping for ransom is probably a higher dollar than just a  it just says nothing to be i it was it was very much focused on league legal conclusions based on the aberrational breach the rejection of aberrational corrupt law enforcement officer plus the fact that the lea