oh yay oh yay oh yay all preparing having any manner or form affairs minutes before the honorable the united states court of appeals for the th circuit or admonish to get their attention for the court is now saying god save the united states and this honorable court petitioner is going as we filed this appeal from an administrative decision by the board of immigration appeals on the days of the being a adopting the decision of the i just ignored compelling uncontroverted evidence in the record and applied the wrong and now it says when determining that ms gomez had not suffered persecution because of her membership in one or more could in fact protect her from the persecution and or for purposes of caste whether or not they were blindly allowing such persecution to occur turning to that she was repeatedly made the subject of death threats in connection with extortion and thames and recruitment attempts of her various family members as this court is held death threats are considered to be persecution and her concert her testimony was uncontroverted on that aspect and so i think she is stablished that she had clearly suffered past persecution  testimony of the evidence that came in at her hearing was that first her husband was recruited to work for the gangs and when he refused again threatened to harm not only him but his family members which of course would include ms gomez then her brother was also recruited to work for the games and when he refused similarly the game threatened not only harm to him but to his family honor is that she has one brother who in fact was killed and she has two other siblings who still live in water mala her parents also met there and she maintain that they have also been subject to persecution yes ma'am not her parents her mother's excuse me not her parents but her other siblings this one sibling home brother who was eventually killed by the gang she doesn't know i was talking about quite a lot of documentary evidence that we presented in the record from various sources and i believe also the state department reports indicated that the zetas are an active gang influence in the country well you need more than that don't you when we have the testimony from is going to meant herself as to her personal experiences and then we had very supporting affidavits and then the documentary evidence that there was emitted by the i j a including those state department reports after her after her brother was threatened and after her brother a fee is and the game threatened by the him and his family her as she then found out from her father that the games were extorting  father for money and when he could not pay they also threatened to harm him and his family which of course including the gomez ultimately they did in fact kill her brother and there's evidence of that in the record his death certificate the report her testimony some supporting family affidavits that they did a back to kill her brother and she was very concerned that she would be next in line after she found out that her father was being stored as she herself was approached by the gangs they had connected her with her brother in a moped accident before her brother's death and she was approached by the gangs and told that because she was a public school teacher which made her a government employee that they wanted her to run drugs for them that she would be a very effective newel because she would not be suspected of drug activity because of her threats were directed to her or why she was made the subject of death threats but i think that that's the inappropriate analysis that applied in finding that she didn't meet that  standard but for her being a member of the family those death threats that were made to her husband and to her brother and to her father would not have included her it was soley because of her membership in those family groups that she was made the subject of the death threats that resulted from her husband and her brother and her father refusing to concede to the demands of the gangs i did have an opportunity to read the recent decision by the four circuit in the hernandez carnahan a case that was just issued a couple weeks ago where this court discussed the fact that the threats can be made to families to the to the applicant's family and that the analysis is not what the come with the motivation was for the the gang making those threats to the families to the family member it could be greed it could be extortion it could be a lot of things but the perp or denounces is to determine whether or not the death threats that included the applicants were made against the applicants olie because they were members of the family that was being exported or the work crew did to work for the gang and i think that's exactly what happened here but for her marriage her were ones that were directed and did check her but the fact that there were direct threats to her later does on one about the fact that she was made the subject of death threats previously solely because she had the family relationship membership in that family group council excuse me this is good tina so if it's your position then that there might be there can be more than one central we think you know persecution and that's really it seems to me that the lynchpin of your argument is here today yes yes ma'am the she and the family group but then she had the death threats to her directly but there  we also argued that that her position as a government employee and a teacher led to her being persecuted the that that was the specific reason that she personally and not someone else was targeted by the gangs and threatened with death if she was on drugs for them so we have another reason but these reasons can be intermixed intermingled and still get us to the same result we also argued that her open resistance to these gangs was an imputed political opinion and this was another reason why she was persecuted why she individually herself and not someone else was persecuted and made the subject of these death threats this court has previously held that her refusal to join the gangs or to work for the gangs has a political dimension and gangs may target resistors for retaliation as part of that and that's exactly what happened here the death threats were made to her because she was openly opposing their efforts to recruit her she went to the police and reported the persecution that her brother and her father and herself had been suffering thousand is not the appropriate analysis for purposes of determining whether the applicant has suffered persecution in the form of death threats and certainly in that caving in on the counsel but it certainly is  her st one was the that she received death threats with respect to her husband brother and father sold it because she was a member of the family they they weren't targeting her i know you'd say that gives a finding to the contrary isn't there and  i guess what i'm asking is if several members but not all members of the family are targeted for financial reasons does that mean targeting them because of their familiar automatically or is it because of the financial reasons i think that the other members of her family were targeted for financial reasons i think she was made the subject of death threats solely as a and what about the fact that the family witness to gang murder i have heard you're saying think about that today is that a significant fact in your analysis or not you know ma'am that i factor that led to the gangs starting to target her family members for working for them and for money ok thank you i don't think i understood that answer i thought you said but then the rest of your answer seemed to be yes ma'am the witnessing the murder at the very end the several of the very beginning of this whole time  was how her family st once noticed by the games and her shortly after that her husband started receiving calls from gang members demanding that he come to work for them i guess what i was interested in in that fact was clearly that the gang told her family to forget what they saw where the gang would kill them the family is that an accurate reading of the records or could you tell me anything on the basis of our appeal ok and i think my time is up what do you mean it's not that they did you say it's not the basis of your appeal she we should it's not she did not claim that that was a specific social group but she belonged to and they were persecuted as a group who had witnessed a gang murder that was not one of the social groups that she was directing questionable social group with the number one social group of her family and this happened to a member of her family fess up to you this is my very st immigration case ever and so i'm very new to this area of law but the cases that i read indicated that being a member of a group who underlying issue is it was her sam lee that witnessed the murder and was told not to say anything or they would be killed and you are saying she is being persecuted because of her membership in her family and i think you can it seems right i need you know i there was right already and i see where you're going i would say that would be an additional helpful factor for my argument that its size family groups that she belongs to that's her social group and that she's being persecuted as a member of that social group that particular family relationship  to me what they did to my brother and as he was later approached by the gang members when she was visiting her brother's grades if they threatened to do trip for what they did to her  to actually take up on the supreme court right now and that circus like held recently that like if the fact that the immigration fifty fiftieth's that was credible that you have to accept even her opinions that this is going to kill the future but persecution will grant you still be the same threats that were made against her is there evidence in the record but this presumption that with then the rise of well founded fear persecution what what correct the case it's an artery so i guess what i'm what i'm trying to figure out here and maybe you can help me mr stanton and this is to keenan again it seems to me if we have a shifting of the burden if we disagree with you on the issue of family ties and tat's persecution being one central reason for her persecution don't we have to vacate together findings of your honors very briefly the briefs say everything that we need to see saying but there is a point of context that i would like to point out we've discussed this afternoon about relocation and whether it's reasonable or feasible for her to do it whether she tried to do it as i pointed out in my brief the country the entire country want to malala is roughly the size of mecklenburg county which is where charlotte north carolina sits when we're talking about internal relocation it and i think next number county is probably roughly the size of the county in which the court sits in richmond so we're talking about internal relocation we're talking about her going from one side of the county to the other side of the county and we're talking about a country where our own state department year after year after year filed a report saying that gang activity is extensive per vases intrusive and war actually has infiltrated the police so there are much well we're much more well funded than the police so i think it's easy for us maybe to sit in america and talk about internal relocation within the country as a means of avoiding harm but that is a very different situation on the ground when we're talking about a country the size of guatemala with the historic levels of gang activity both within the government and without the one other thing i would point out is that i believe that the simply the wrong legal standard applied to her requests for humanitarian asylum is i read a adopted the i g s conclusion that because she didn't qualify they felt that she didn't qualify for statutory asylum and i'm not into the question of humanitarian the solomon i don't think that that's the state of the law thank you for your time today and your court will take a brief break before hearing the