good morning may please the court my name is matthew ferraro and i represent the petitioner i kind of request two minutes for a bottle this case comes to the court in an unusual posture the petitioners kept claim was screened out at a perfunctory reasonable fear proceeding before it was heard on the merits thus the issue before the court here boils down to this did substantial evidence support the i j a is finding that the petitioners credible evidence based fear of future torture was nothing more than frivolous you're not just arguing that there's something amiss with this new screening process for certain types of people you're not the concluded as to design officer that there was no reasonable fear and that is incorrect yes clearly substantial evidence did not support that finding the petitioners for your future torture was reasonable and the case should be remanded for a merits hearing i'd like to make three points first the standard for establishing a reasonable fear is very low second the petitioner satisfied both the subjective and object of prongs of that low standard and third the idea is failure to consider relevant evidence provides an independent ground for remount so i'll take those in order first the standard as i said for reasonable fear is very low all the petitioner had to show was a reasonable possibility of future torture even a ten percent chance ten percent satisfies that low threshold so the government doesn't actually seem to dispute and i'll ask your present counsel about this but this ten percent number for this kind of proceedings seems to be agreed between the parties but i had a little bit of trouble figuring out where that comes from here exactly yes your honor so it's imported from the well founded fear standard in the asylum cases and that is a ten percent standard that would be out here robbie against ins such that is the ten percent threshold and i would if i saw these regulations like refer to the asylum standard but is it totally clear that they referred to the ten percent aspect of the asylum standard yes your honor and i'll give you another case that actually was published after are happy to file a twenty eight it's part of me against sessions it's a judge on our smith opinion and that explicitly says if he has to find that it's ten percent for it  that true though when we're talking about cat versus asylum because i don't think that with kat that was the point of the judge smith opinion was a judgement what was your honor i believe i have it here front of me but  clearly i could find it you want to talk with them specifically but yes no i don't think that the ten percent is disputed i do think that it's imported over from his own contacts in the regulations but it's clearly this ten percent level well we have a presumption that th d it's difficult for me to see how we can tip that over i j was just attempting to determine whether or not the initial agent was correct on this speculative that's the only side from reciting the standard that's really the only thing the i j a says and i have to say i understand the point that you we presume the government acts correctly but of course for their view to be anything more than a nobody we have to face the facts that in these circumstances words where it's clear that he didn't consider the evidence the i didn't even engage with the central argument you say he didn't consider the evidence and you want right on where can we find that this record i'll give evidence yes the i j a immediately issues immediately isn't quite right the person who was turned scribing is only transcribing what is said you're assuming there was not a long period of time between the statement it could be equally that was occurring because the person who is taking it down is only recording statements made now we have a presumption that binds us that the i has looked at all the evidence you have to show that presumption is wrong and you're only by doing that by assuming that the statement was made right after the the material was hell but i don't see from the know if he if he did not engage with the central argument that's right that's why we presume that that it is and if if there's something going on the council will tell us in the record before the i j a but aside from that standard that you're arguing does that mean that anybody who has any connection however remote with the cartel is is satisfies this no gentleman doesn't know first of all and in this circumstance  just to address specifically what you said it's not known exactly the who these people are against whom mr mendoza would take a testified in court there are seven individuals involved in a murder plot against him the result in the murder  diaz his friend we one presumes i suppose that they're enemies the cartel but that's not in the record that is the kind of thing they're not part of the curtain i we don't know that sir and i will say that it mr mendoza or take is very clear testify about him and i'll just say i mean the mr meadows or tara tells the i j a clearly i'm scared of going to mexico because during the trial i gave out a lot of information i mention the names of people in mexico and i'm scared that they know what i've done and he tells the asylum officer i'm afraid the people want to torture me because i game gave names of people in mexico he said i gave out i had to give out information and testify against all those people and who the drugs belong to that is to say the cartel because they didn't know that and the person presumably altschul although we don't know being in mexico so so to your point your honor i don't think that there's a there's a fear here that we're going to open the floodgates for every conceivable person to come in in this circumstance he testified credibly in three trials about the cartel gave information that was at first to the  that and that means it has to be a dance the cartel that we can just extrapolate because they were in the cartel that must've been this again i think this goes back to the stand in the evidentiary standard here we're talking about ten percent to get the same before and so i mean it's perfectly it subjective y reasonable right that's the standard objective be reasonable to believe that when he says who will the question is who will harm you in mexico people and the owners of the drug i think people are the knights templar cartel and i think to presume otherwise is  to assume far too much especially here with evan interest entered is so low but also give you some time for about a little i will give you a minute and a half or rebuttal if you want to save the rest of your time and we'll hear from the government all right you and i just want to say one very quick thing about on the due process argument just to be very clear this is not a reinstatement of removal case and that was an error in the government's brief i just want to say on opening thank you very much the court my name is jonathan robison and i'm here on behalf of the acting attorney general good morning to everyone as you just discussed with my colleague at length the issue in this case is whether or not the record compels reversal of the immigration judges determination the ten percent isn't in any regulation that's a creature of peace accords and in allies in the well founded fear standards have said that's a ten percent threshold in this court has agreed with that with the supreme court on on that front and there is no just the government is not disputing agrees in fact that the standard in this case is the kynge of the well founded fear standard that we normally see inside cases but of course we're talking about the torture convention here so this is a slightly different standard than really dealing with in the torture context because that standard is much more and your honour's know that claims that are speculative usually have a difficult time meeting even that well founded fear standard and that's really only the problem with petitioners claim here and that's what the immigration judge found was the problem was that his claim is simply too speculative again involved in those in the drug dealing and that was the cartel so i it does seem like he's saying i testified about the cartels illegal activity well a few things about what he stated to the asylum officer in that respect he does say that he talked about his cousin wanted doggo who was also arrested at the same time that he was for it you know remember his cousin was of arrest the same time as he was so it doesn't seem like his discussion during any trial of the fact that these drugs the woman was cousin and any effect on his cousin being arrested his cousin appeared to have already been arrested and then he doesn't really provide any detail of getting any other information about anybody else mexico other than stating that the that he told him to do that that he told the court that these drugs belonged to his cousin so doesn't seem like there this is any information that was actually used against us because if you actually take a look at the back and forth between the asylum officer there are numerous points in the record where this it will does your cousin want to blame you for what happened and he answers the  cousin doesn't blame him for what happened this is did you provide testimony against his cousin he says no you burnished one statement against your cousin he says no so this a he says he does i did talk about what his cousin had been doing right i mean it's not against this cousin but he still discussing his cousin and other people's trial right but in terms of whether or not because the ultimate question here is is the dark cartel going to have some sort of reasonable possibility of targeting him and from the college cartels perspective i mean he was essentially selling cartel drugs they were attacked they were arrested he served a bunch of time in prison his cousin was also arrested at the same time before he could provide any testimony so the question would know nobody from the cartel was put on to it in testify against anybody from the cartel so the question here mexico i don't know how they get the info i think they know i don't think they know what i said at the trial so he doesn't suggest that anybody in mexico knows what happened or is a trip and the question ultimately for the i g is is there any reason why they would want to go after given the fact that he's never been harmed that he's never been called a snitch that he's never testified against the cartel that i mean if you did that the claim is basically based completely on what we sort of generally know about cartels we all know that cartels are awful they commit they often do manage to turn police and things of that nature but is that alone enough when the claim is purely speculative it's usually not enough at least in his island context when we're looking at the well founded fear standard specular claims and this claim is just i think actually two of the more recent decision from september and bartolom it was scored is acknowledged that this is an inappropriate screening process and only there's a court of appeals in the country that has said that this isn't a valid process so i don't think there's any nearer to the argument that this was somehow in st in this case we've actually got more than we usually see because we have an actual world decision by the immigration judge and sometimes it's just that she with a checkbox on the distinction that petitioner has tried make about this being not being a reinstatement case instead  a case under two thirty eight because the expedited removal because petition has never been funny that's really a distinction without a difference the reasonable fear process is the same in both of those in fact if you look at the work in this case there's a check boxes on the work i did and reinstat i haven't thought through this totally to help me with this it is there a reason they couldn't have had a cat claim in the earlier proceeding if they did have a cat claim i mean unless something new happened in the country in the meantime which isn't the sort of situation here i mean in any case i mean i suppose it's all right that all the sudden something changes in a country and now you have a risk of torture you didn't have before but in general at every other statement preceeding there would have been an earlier opportunity to make a claim and so i'm not sure it does transfer from one to the other that we can assume that the protections should be the same my point here is that the reasonable fear screening process which is promulgated by regulation is one of the same there's no distinction in the regulations between the process it's the same reason if you're screening process and they're over they've always been treated as being the same process and that's in fact reflected in a lot of the documents even in this case where you can see that on the reasonable future work eat there's a worksheet for the check up to say this is either a twelve thirty one a fun or a twelve twenty one b which is the that's reinstatement and the aggravated fil remove all rationales for reasonable fear process so they've never been treated differently so the fact that this was a private wasn't a restatement gets really is a distinction without a difference there is and i think at the end of the day this process is already  both as we don't need to quibble about it i'm not sure that it was really focused on the standard for cat but they're not that contesting it's a yes or no i must say i'm aroused as i do that is just incorrect and i think you just read and it talks all about how in that context where a petitioner has gone through a previous lengthy removal process and has had all of the benefits of  you know that he was the one who testified against the cartel i would just say that a he says that he believes that all sure all knows he believes that feel when and as will say that he does but even if he doesn't know discovered that he had testified against them did he testify against the cartel i just think or give information about the cartel we can look at the way the asylum officer summarized the testimony he says mendoza or take a divulged information regarding one and the drug cartel that they worked for that's a fair one seventy five so i think that result and i just think that this notion that this is sort of a generalized speculative harm really does disservice to the facts in this about future persecution so of course he hasn't been in mexico for sixteen years long before he became a target of the cartel so he's not going to have the kind of information he's been in cars rated for several years and i don't think the courts have always relied upon reports and third party evidence to establish things like country conditions there thank you counsel and thank you for taking this case pro bono we really appreciate your service to the court in doing that my