was wrong for three independent reasons first the sing decision we cite in our in our priest demonstrates not persecution on a company that's the same decision it was and i'm circuit decision demonstrates that persecution on account of a false referring to just stop itself we think that that it misapplied the basic statute and the reason for that is we don't disagree with any of the factual findings made by the judge and those were two in particular one that the soldiers tortured the  er because they suspected he was a member of the i want to laugh and two was the credited testimony of the petitioner but the reason for that suspicion was because he was an opening now the i g took those two facts and came only well then your honor i think the i didn't internally contradictory because if you look at it it does credit to the testimony of of the of the petitioner that the reason for about suspicion was his of for me to think about it there may be substantial evidence to support the finding that one central reason was supporter of terrorism but the issue before us is whether or not the finding that it was the only reason or that's the evidentiary question and you're saying that you look at the record and you look at the credibility findings and in fact it requires would compel any reasonable juror to find that it was because of family persecution ethnicity or that those are three different baskets absolutely one it seemed maybe storms to me was more family if fathers distrusted uncles distrusted grandfathers just trusted enough to kill them all then they extend the distrust of the child absolutely wrong to fed their the then read the government responses but they never went after the child until he opened the store again what's the thought on that well i think it's important to basically distinguish between not one causation and motivation there might be many reasons why persecution happened but asylum eligibility turns on the first prestigious quotation to take an example were they issued for i mean it is kafkaesque we have to decide what was in this torturers money that's really what we're doing just what you said which is you've got to particularize more you've got to go through the s p factors what would be the best case that would support just to remain there actually want to be on the s p factors but on the general on the first two which is essential you fail to consider central motivation remains necessary i say that but let's let's say it's unclear what your honor i'm actually not aware of any circuit precedent on that however be the basic principle that the i j is opinion can be scored by the record however there is a legal error so you rem to take a better example of petition or might not of two been tortured all if the soldiers hadn't been operating in this neighborhood so in one sense petitioner's residence in that neighborhood was one reason the first persecution but no court would say that the petitioners persecution was an account of his neighborhood or that that was the opinion to then persecute and torture him now the government seems to make two different arguments on what i like to call or underlying motives argument one is essentially a legal argument the government characteristic as a matter of law but a blanket rule like that ignores a central motivation standard completely and it will allow foreign governments to persecute individuals impunity so long as they put a sensually a veneer of investigation behind their ethnic stereotype take it to a more tongue example if isis basically baselessly declared that every single person in their territory was against their government which they have then it makes it noble family or particular political unit is a terrorist you are making that you are making that terrorism determination based on a protected ground in this case for example if the government believes that all obedient are members of the i want to laugh and therefore example as well maybe maybe targeting anyone who's giving that kind of support at the grocery store is giving me financial support your honor and a financial supporter of filtering so one lives through this door whatever there's no and a as decision in its one sentence of well here's the reason he was persecuted it's investigating terrorism and i think your point is if the if that's all it takes that's a whitewash you'll never get asylum but your honor so where do we look to for when you've got a legitimate investigating terrorism versus an illegitimate one is there a case that spells that distinction actually your honor none that we have found none of the governments cited  terrorism and there was no finding f a s t was the basis for that suspicion it's similar to all the cases in fact that's there was a reasonable investigation and i used the word legitimate it required to do these investigations have to be legitimate not necessarily your honor this actually goes to our second argument which is the same case which is whether an investigation into a separatist group even if it was legitimate if it ends up being false but is persecution based on computer political opinion it's actually somewhat different argument that's the ninth circuit and that's a little further than we've gone but but i see it slightly different twist your even assuming they can be wrong in their investigation that's what they can't do is torture how would we ever want to give that do any of these investigative terrorism cases involve torture and compelling someone to then go back and be a spot on that how can we ever characterize that as a legitimate investigation we would and that's actually that is the matter  mean using using a threat or using torture well i think there are many ways it could be a legitimate and the one that i would highlight here because it's relevant for us is about if it's based on something that's not a protected characteristic  eligible he would not be employed on the in this case however the basis for the investigation the basis for suspicion the basis for the torture was his ethnicity and family member ship and his if you look at it it was for any other reason see my time's expired it was for any other please the court the court should deny the petition for view in this case because the record is replete with evidence that the petitioner was singled out because of his suspected conduct and not because of who he was he wrote that his father was first accused of collecting donations grocery store and after the petition to reopen his father's store the same accusations that were leveled at his father were leveled at him so what's the significance of the grocery store first petitioners own evidence shows the government security forces target quote market traders and quote business leaders because they believe these groups may be supporting the o and o s second the petition has other evidence shows that on all fighters obtain provisions from civilian supporters in towns and villages in the petitioners cousin describe this particular store as in the town the petitioner was not harmed or threatened during the ten months when the store was closed as john pointed out and it was only after he reopened that the be he began having problems with the government but on that theory any working shop in this region would then allow persecution of that shop owner because they could be sort of passive tense support could be supporting the terrorism with the record doesn't i guess let me ask you this way do you have any record evidence that shows that this boy was alleged to be channeling money to this boy not the father was channeling money is there anything in the record to support that you know is there anything in the record to support your brief statement that the business was successful when he was running that the business was successful during the months that he was turning or not his father know that pertains to the prior time when the father was operating ok but see that all suggest to me that the reason they persecuted him was because of the father and then you're you're in the world of  protected category the father runs the store and there's direct evidence in the record that he says whatever the customers gave him money gave it to terrorism so they're after him they kill his brother asks about him he gets killed the father asks about him he gets killed or disappeared whatever happened you know what your boy reopens the store i didn't see evidence that it was quote successful at point i didn't see any evidence that he was then there was suggestion he was it was all passive tense well any store would help at that point so the connection has to be through the family and they just want to kill all males in the family well your honor i think it's important to distinguish what happened to the oco and the grandfather because that was factually distinct the maternal uncle refused to fight me if you open an army and he was detained and then later told the maternal grandfather went to the authorities to find out what happened his son the maternal uncle and then he was detained that's separate and  stork shows that the only reason this young man was released was because he made the opposite decision than his uncle he lies to them and says i will go spy for you and then he gets out of there so again to me it relates directly to what learned about the family i don't know the record i thought it was credited that he only reason he gets out is because he says all spy does that's correct well his uncle made the opposite decision and was uncle the but the owner was asked to join the army which is something quite different than spying on neighbors well if it's different it would seem to me to be problematic for the government here because when i read all the investigation cases and i agree they deserve deference as c'mere pereira's in raspy every single one of those you have an individual that's persecuted that is much closer to the terrorism he's in the military bunker when he's found he's at the pro kurdish demonstration so on that way and then when you look at what the persecution is it really is governments getting information foot beating and all that not known is there any legitimate investigation where we the federal government through the courts say that's a legitimate terrorism investigation that justifies the persecution that involved killing every adult male in the family and telling a person you get out if you spy how do we how do we ever write that that's a legitimate government investigation  i'm not sure how to answer their question your honor but i think what we need here is the way you can answer it due to the facts of this case approximate any legitimate government investigation case that you can cite to me with respect with respect  to be searching for information tactics here killing and torture credited past tense plus future the i j a said if he comes back anywhere in the open he will be tortured again do you have any case where we say the persecution is permissible because it's in meaningful part for a government that legitimate government escalation where we have that will level of searching for information no ok but i think there's there's a distinction that needs to be drawn here between torture convention protection which he received and persecution which needs to asylum which is what we're discussing today and for the for asylum to be for the person to be eligible for asylum the conduct has to be on talent oh one of the protected grounds his alleged ethnicity which falls under a particular social group or his family which which then does as well the tactics are a different issue and i'm not defending  reason he was persecuted was for a legitimate investigation if the this if the i j a made that factual finding but everyone agrees it was not a legitimate investigation case torture and forcing someone to be a spy then that discredits the only reason found and the record is replete with another central meaningful part could be that he's the son of the guy who is suspected of supporting or when you say not legitimate do you mean that it's pretext the tactics are unacceptable and civilized society i mean every case that i could possibly read had searching for information government investigation at worst beating feet i couldn't find a case where oh the the us government is telling us defer to them for investigative and in detention when the investigative means involve killing people the means don't go to the  intense and the intent has to be to harm someone on account of their membership in the particular social group we are negative part but the positive part is this i j said the only reason they did what they did was for a legitimate government investigation i have a real problem with that if it were me i would say the s p factors would tell us was it legitimate or not ok you see where i am yes wrong i think well first with respect to is it in the act yeah the enacted the one central reason standard which is a higher standard than have been and it had been ordered and used previously so now we have the one central reason standard allowing for mixed motives doesn't speak to whether the investigation is pretext or not and there's no issue here about whether we don't know whether the investigation was pretextual the father may well have been funneling money to the i want to live that all legitimate investigation may protect you that i was trying to zero in on this was judged against and i'm not sure that they were not still talking past each other but all i'm not talking past i agree with your statement just now that probably under our deferential law what they did to the father we wouldn't touch so then the only jump that i can see would suggest this boy is funneling money is that it's a quote successful business or that they actually don't round him up until it reopens that's it until it reopens there there i believe there's something about that shop that the government was interested in and it may have been legitimate it may have not been but the question before the court is now whether is sufficient evidence in the record to find that any reasonable fact finder would have gone the other way the immigration judge found that this was any reasonable fact finder wouldn't find that there could not be another meaningful reason why the immigration judge found that this was the only reason i have that's very hard for me to understand but the standard is one central reason there could have been other reasons that were not legally central meeting that definition in the that's the case if the immigration judge was wrong to say there is only this one reason and that's it but in fact there is a social reason there is another reason there would be harmless error i don't know because only some for reasons torture killing and forcing people to be spies so the only reason credit isn't a available reason and the law at least if you look at the s p factors and i'm going to look into what you said on the other hand what's the practical characteristic because if it wasn't for that means what was it for it's got to be one of the three the one that seems to me pretty obvious is if you kill every adult male in a family it seems like it's pretty meaningful that you're trying to kill male family  and the department of state said let's look at exactly how they investigated and there they rounded people up and sure enough one of them was convicted and they had due process and therefore we say that's reasonable investigation we're for s p we're talking about prete al are we going after you because of some protective characteristic you have but doing it in the guise of the special dom but even when you look at s p the first factor is indications that the abuse was directed toward modifying or punishing opinion rather than conduct and we come back to the ten months that nothing happens in the sun that is the big fact the government wasn't interested in him until he started selling things out of this particular story but in those ten months did he make inquiries about the grandfather in the oh i don't recall or could be important because that would explain why they suddenly say well here's another male in the family we need to get rid of except that the government not not the police but the local authorities initially permitted him to reopen the store and then it was this some troll police that said oh no you can't do that again either or let me ask you about the same case  my intent always goes up when one side relies substantially on a particular case and then the other side in its response to brief doesn't mean to read into that weakness i understand that saying is from another circuit therefore it's not binding on us but is it is it wrongly decided in your view or if it were a binding decision how would you deal with i think saying goes a bit too far i don't i don't really see a way to reconcile it with the mare which is binding authority in the circuit and we have very clear statements that investigation of terrorism is not persecution and this investigative at least in part and it's hard to even say how you're pausing is the way i think of it as a former prosecutor it's hard to say this is an investigation if you're if it's your choices are torture killed or spot how do we call that investigation i think we have a tendency sometimes in this country to assume that all other governments operate the way ours does and unfortunately that's not always the case there are many places in the world where this sort of activity is you describ investigative case where we the courts searchingly look at other countries approach and we say there was due process there was a trial here that's what was released and that validates the investigation  the i've handled cases for example from india where the police are are very heavy handed and often there is no trial that comes that the people are just released and that's how we often get to grants of protection under the circuit by legitimate they mean that they're actually looking into something that's real it's not made up because they want to go after someone in particular there was an actual crime committed and then were going to beat someone up really badly  here there are appears to at least be a reasonable basis to believe that the father was doing something that caused the government to go after him with that but i just don't see the connection  the the son was operating the same store and they wanted information to know what he was doing they asked him are you you are i believe the phrase was gathering people like your father d i would think that the ethiopian government like all governments has limited resources and has to prioritize and probably would not intentionally go after deadly if i could come down to about two minutes left i just wanted to touch on  the underlying issues is also a matter of j v n n as the petitioner has essentially conceded that his ethnicity was an underlying reason and the board has defined incidental and subordinate  reasons to be not central reasons they may be other reasons they're not central reasons that reached the threshold necessary for asylum and of course as we discussed the court accord chevron deference to the boards published decisions ethnicity there wasn't any other factual basis and in this case the story is clearly the central point of contention between the parties something was happening there and it was reasonable for the board to come to that conclusion in the unpublished case the question now is whether it was there is so little evidence that the court can uphold the i j a in the board's decision in this case and materially different facts p factors second point i believe your honor also asked if there's any definition what makes the investigation illegitimate council's right there's no there's been no upright wind distinction made but the matter of s p rules factors do kind of go to that i want to focus on the third matter recipe factor which is conformity to procedures for crown prosecution or military law including developing international norms regarding the law of war this is essentially where you do see where things what what a government is doing is legitimate or not and in this about his argument on how we use the term underlying therefore we concede it can't be a central motivation this isn't a magic words to us we use underlying to be descriptive at the end of day it is about what motivated the persecutor to engage in persecution the reason  use underlying is because it is what was undergird it was what was forming the basis for their suspicion of being on a lot of them or if anything we would say that the underlying motivation for something is the stronger stronger motivation it's why you do something that case there was no other potential reason spec he was a member of or supporter of the of the oh what a laugh whereas in this case there was that actually wasn't the basis for the b i says if anything you can argue that case actually had a somewhat stronger motivation he had  a group whose sole purpose is to essentially stand opposed to the government and i'm certain correctly recognized that the reason the reason for that persecution is because of their political and that's really just applying existing