whatever that's me your honor that's me and that i'm here today my primary focus initially will be directed to the due process argument and i would note that this case the present falls within the four corners i believe the honorable judge gold is in and hernandez hill versus gonzales and i'll kind of come back that but you know in this case the immigration judge created a hostile fearful and bullying atmosphere creating a chilling effect and thereby violating the patisseries due process rights in fact he put her in the same situation she had been in cameroon which she would have been persecuted by mr thomas well the problem is that even though this judge kept saying he was going to give a continuance as and kept saying he was going to deal with you by telephone he in fact did give her the continuances and he did call your office and you weren't there to the very limited time but throughout throughout the whole even though the the i say i didn't know that there's a question been made which is mistakenly should have known even though he said he was going to make the phone call it didn't make the phone call he did your honor and he was told by the receptionist that the lawyer would be in india just a second or you know within a matter of a minute back half way yes your honor we called the court but we were not able to judge was on the bench we're not able to get through to him ok and i wouldn't mind hearing about the m case frankly i'm sorry i wouldn't mind hearing about the merits of the case frank yes your honor well your honor the sub central evidence does not support the board's decision and part of that you know  factors is that because she was not allowed to have the benefit of counsel she was not able to present a lot of evidence your honor but but the board ruled that well because she did in their opinion had been firmly resettle in south africa the immigration judge nor the board to consider any any evidence or facts relating to how her life ha been prior to leaving cam or any authority for that proposition i e is there any case held in there that if somebody then comes back to the racial country just ignore everything that happened to them before they're in that country no your honor there really isn't there's not in the statue or scase law you know and in so we we understand you know i understand the position of if one's firmly resettled but we believe that it's two arguments to demonstrate that that's not really a situation or one because of the harm that she the petitioner and her brother had suffered in and south africa and additionally your honor i don't think it's fair to the two  to a petition or to an asylum applicant to say well we can't look back at the history just to see how you have a subjective fear of harm of persecution or even there's an objective and i think that that is not you know logical reasonable that it's important to look at the totality of the circumstances me if i'm wrong that seems to me that the root problem here is that there was no inquiry or judy cation as to whether or not she was from the resettled in south africa and everything flowed from the lack of that determination and i'm missing something well simply the judge made a conclusion looked into your honor i agree with that and the board just kind of oh well if she was firmly resettled in south africa which possibly could have been the case if this was a full hearing that explore that issue then we have a different cup of mentions that that the government was not pressing for her to be returned there and so that's why the board just seemed overlooked that are really just mentioned in the footnote really didn't deal with that issue   your honor i don't agree with the first part but if i do respect i would not necessarily agree with the latter part because one still has to look to see if facts or if circumstances have happened after a person is quote unquote friendly resettled to cause that person to fear and to no longer feel safe isn't the question here whether she could be sent back to cameroon because that's what they're asking for y whether that depends on her having been firmly resettled in south africa for several years but now she apparently isn't or at least the government doesn't see it that way so they just want to take out the seventy years but they don't want to claim that she should  under the act your honor but that it would not under under the torture convention and because regarding that last point i was noting is upon her return to cameroon she was still victimized she was still persecuted by mr thomas she hid in the church for the for the limited time that she was in cameroon and the same person had said raped or beaten or whipped or center hospital had the police lock her up you know and and even one time he beat her so bad when she was pregnant that she became unconscious when she came to he had stripped her naked and was sexually abusing her this same same individual attempted to do the same thing in public upon her return to cameroon he discovered she was at the church he went there and found her as she had walked outside the church on the public and he attempted to rape or in public ok and based on that the trauma and i would argue is that she's clearly was a victim of posttraumatic stress disorder seen this man again and having him attempt to do the same thing to her that he had been doing for many many years previously would definitely cause her to have subjective belief that their life is in danger and i think it's objective the he also attempted to have her children kidnapped just just to abuse or to to harm or to to harass or to intimidate her so so things continue to happen a tram like that they came upon her but he didn't come upon her it was i gather even by her you know in our full description he came looking for yes your honor he had sought her out he had been hit put pressure on her family relatives and friends and in the village where she was from about you know about her and where is she and someone divulged to to him and maybe multiple people that she was hiding in a church ok seeking caused her not to have to be allowed to have a full and fair hearing which is she is in the title to circumstance and she was only able to escape from being raped again in public when she screamed and was able to get help and be able to get away from him that time and  not long after that she fled cameroon fearing for her life again she also has as the the problem if you will or challenge of the police the same men mr thomas is very powerful influential businessman he's well connected as evidence showed expected so much of what about i mean the real elephant in the room here is the protect is the particular social group problem given now i understand we have a new book because there's a new ruling on there and on remand you may in fact have a big problem but what about with regard to what exists so far there was also a behalf of the board and the i j a because it's just because ok she had two children with this man he's all there always going to be in a relationship if nothing else parents they may not be husband wife in his mind she was his property that would never change ok no matter what his mind she was his property he could do with her as he willed ok so there was still a relationship it may not be a husband wife and they were needle legally married never legally married but he treated her as his partner he treated her as a sex slave ok he treated her as his victim that never changed in his eyes  were that that i had filed a motion for continuance upon being being retained that was denied i get stuck on the fact that you weren't there when the phone call was made and there was no explanation of that in the record  true that probably would have been hell for your honner it would have done that i guess i mean one would think that if you think there is going to be a hearing at a certain time and it would telephonic hearing that you would be there yes your honor and one thing we have is a time time differen well it's a judgment call right at the one o'clock time that was scheduled nor it was it was some time after that after he had had a long discussion or no discussion with that with the petitioner about that she was wrong and she was causing or i said that's some immigration judges have recommended that because they said well you should get in if you're not prepared but you know on the other hand you want the client to have have counsel if at all possible because i think in my opinion they're much better served if they have counsel they can present their case much better to have counsel let me ask you this question i read is this is it looks like even though he was very upset about the problems that he had in trying to get to have a hearing it seemed like you really pretty good job yeah actually well right she did considering the chief tells us missing from his analysis well there is a lot of things lot to the table there's a lot of things your honor one there would have been an articulation of the particular social about the credibility they said he was wrong on that are rare actually it seems wrong on that but they didn't give her the benefit because having council one could obtain property and evidence evidence for example  may please the court victoria braga appearing on behalf of the acting attorney general the court should deny the petition for review because the agency's denial of relief and protection are supported by substantial evidence and because ms aires proceedings comported with due process so i'm a little confused maybe you can straighten my confusion out there's been no the terminations i was there with as she was fully resettled in south africa i will guess right i think that i j and the board considered her firmly resettled in south africa based on her testimony that she was firmly resettled in south africa how can the water to be returned to cameroon she should go back to south africa and i'm missing something here wife she remains that she never testified that she had lost her citizenship in cameroon so she remains a native and citizen of cameroon the finding that she had been from the resettled between two thousand and one what finding that she was from  guess the the reference to the fact that she was firmly resettlement was firmly resettled was based on her testimony that she had received refugee status in south africa what is the relevance of i have two questions one al in this case i don't think for settlement should be seen as a bar it's simply something that the i j a and the board use in analyzing miscarries what is the justification for that is there any i mean if they're going to send her back to that happened what's the basis for that but i think it's the principles underlying firmer settlement so when a person becomes firmly resettled there they are barred from obtaining asylum in our country based on the persecution that they had experienced that led to i think i should have sent her back to the southern country but now you're not sending her back to this other country you're saying to go back to the first two are all the stuff happened and to put complete blinkers on and make believe that the story is not what the story is i 've never seen a case justifying that i don't think that the board in the immigration judge are saying that the story is not what really it is a they said they acted as if the sky just came upon her one day and decided to rape her and they made no own he was trying they kidnapped the children as if this had nothing to do with her so they agencies finding based on what you just mentioned are that there between two thousand and fourteen and when she left cameroon in two thousand and fifteen there was no past persecution and that is based on the fact that there was only a singular encounter it was an attempted attack this court has held that threats and attempts fall short of what was going on that basis what  cameroon where do we get that from where the board is citing simply the firmer settlement regulations as you said firmer settlement does not apply to withholding so we understand the board's analysis to be more factually based in this case  i think this is actually an accurate it's completely factually inaccurate it says that she was not a domestic relationship with this guy and it says that there was only one thing that happened to her so if we're going to put these seventy years back and go back to what contextualize what actually occurred obviously it didn't just happen once and there was a relationship between them he wasn't just walking down the street just cited a raper and so on right when i was referring to the facts regarding when she lived in cameron and when she left this isn't a typical firm or settlement case in that typically the move is from the country of persecution to the country affirm resettlement to the united states and here here we have the person returning to the country where they had been present here because the government has i mean maybe the government could have set it up so that they were trying to send her back to south africa but they didn't write so i'm not referring to where the government is trying that's a key question if they want to send her to hammer and then the question is what has she a past persecution in cameroon and the answer it seems to be clearly yes that would be the question although we do defend the board's decision that that based on the facts of her move to south africa and then her return to cameroon infirmaries i don't think he says typically the person does not return notion should have been she should go back to south africa or if you going to send her back to cameroon then what's the relevance of whether she was from the resettled in south africa doesn't matter so i think it's relevant to a sort of well founded fear analysis  why isn't the question of whether she has a well founded fear in cameroon which involves everything that ever happened during cameroon right and this court has held that a willing return to a country where a person has been persecuted tends to mitigate against a well founded fear so i think here the the board is using similar principles to find that she was from the resettled and she doesn't deny that she received refugee status which would qualify as from a settlement under this court's case law and then she chose to return to cameroon tending to undermine and she was returning is to his homeland to be very yes that was why she returned it was a willing return she wasn't forced to return the norm in that area of west africa so the person gets buried in their homeland it's certainly understandable that she would take the body and if she does that i don't see how that fact alone would support the inference that fear is a bunch of made up stuff you know i agree with you on that point but i do think that it it's certainly doesn't discount the fact that she did it doesn't go to the past persecution at all it may go to her fear of her future persecution but it doesn't cut or past persecution doesn't well what goes to her past persecution is the fact that she was firmly resettled from that persecution well that's what you're saying but at this point you're making now the fact that she went back to come around has nothing to do with whether you count for past persecution purposes everything else that happened during and cameroon well the fact that the return is following a firmer settlement during which she was protected from past persecution mitigating in the firmer settlement period against a well founded fear would serve to make sense of the words determination that in analyzing her claim it was appropriate only to allies the events of two thousand and four when you have any case which is ever operated this way  we were unable to find any case which has ever followed this fact pattern that is for settlement then a return to the country of past persecution and then a move to the united states and in which the past persecution i mean do you have any down leaving aside the particular social group question which i know is kind of in flux but leaving that aside that she would had a an incredibly strong past persecution claim with regard to what happened to her in cameroon before she went to south africa is there a doubt about that i don't think it's analyzed by the agency i she did suffer i mean i think it was the theory of the agency that she had received refugee status in south africa or since i'm asking you before that if she had gone to south africa if she'd come here at that point right that's what i'm saying i think that agency is understanding that she had received refugee status based on what had happened to her so the agency is recognizing that she was harmed in such a way as a come room right and again we argue that it is a factual analysis in this case if the court believes the board to be making some sort of statement about what the regulations require in this case then i think agreement would be appropriate to allow the board to better explain that which regulations the firm or settlement regulations why and the size which on the withholding you agree that that the whole concept doesn't apply i do which is why we are unable to argue that this is a regulatory holding by the board i think the board's analysis leaves open the possibility that this was a factual analysis but based on the fact that the firm settlement bar would not apply to withholding i think the board would need to do more was so i would be conceding that if the board was doing this as a regulatory analysis then then that would mean that's their right i don't know what that means well some of the board is applying for settlement as a bar then that would be incorrect not a bar but if it's not a bar and what is that while we will hear the board's just using the firm or settlement to analyze the a tally of her claim stating that the former settlement sort of mitigated against her fear  but but you don't get to fear until you decide about whether there was in fact objectively past persecution and they decided in just citing that question they completely took out everything that happened on cameroon until she came back so what you're saying is not the how they proceeded right so i think i am agreeing that if if this court believes that the boards and alice's affirm or settlement in this regard was not complete enough then the case should be reminded so the board could explain more about why it conceptualized the regulations that way hopefully the court could note for the board in such a gross in action implicitly waived the privilege of having counsel and the immigration judge we think was correct to find that there was no good cause and judge was certainly what out of bounds route at a minimum i would agree with that the immigration judge was clearly frustrated i think that this probably happens in a lot of his cases it seemed that this is not a script that he had used for the first time and i think that the frustrations are warranted here miscarry despite multiple warnings that her case would be continued continued to ask for further continuances she then produced an attorney just a week before a hearing which the i j a had asked her not to do she then asked the i j a to call the decision yes following the immigration judge's decision to proceed at the april sixth hearing he did illicit testimony and he'll listen to testimony from this area he actually put country articles into the record himself and he issued a full decision on her case construing it as a particular social group case in which her counsel has never objected to the edges classification of the group or classification of the  claim that id did also really afford miss area a full and fair hearing in accordance with the law says she was not prejudiced by his decision to further continue her case and i want to add one thing in the case that this case remained it based on the firm resettlement issue if the agency then will be considering miscarries domestic violence based claim again i think remained should also include instruction that it should be analyzed under new precedent and to that because we may not approve a new precedent we can let the board or whatever it's going to do one then we can worry about would urge the court to accept the board's factual analysis of farmer settlement in this case and to deny the petition for a view based on the analysis by the i j a of the claim however if the court does not accept the boards for settlement analysis then we would ask for a remained with instruction on how to proceed in that regard thank you very much for an argument was quite helpful give me one minute but articulation of the particular social group group we did you know throughout the brief discussed that we believe that they mischaracterize what was appropriate particular social group your honor i'd like to to your attention the just a board decision that in the matter of y s l c it's twenty six i n n decision six eighty eight page six ninety where they discuss about the conduct of a judge can be