at case here is in this case i will be arguing for fifteen minutes and respectfully request five minutes of the battle for professor jeffrey hoffman also of the university of houston law center the this case is about a mother and her two sons who escaped to the united states after suffering persecution in all salvador including the murder of the husband and father mr veda after a series of threats and violence on appeal petitioners have three points st that petitioners case separate substantial prejudice put to the ineffective assistance of counsel a petition was prior to turning to that the board erred in its application that played out as she has made a principal argument is that the initial counsel at the hearing in front of the i j a in two thousand and eighteen and as it was should have raised a matter of the testify there's a little bit of a back and forth with the judge after that and the judge says a lot about the get the judge caldwell have argument and there were no cases best i could tell side by honor that is especially unusual because petitioners have the burden of demonstrating how the particular social group is cognize a ball and have a particular social purpose one central reason for the persecution that they suffered and it is a very strict a legal framework that is illustrated in a specially for a family member ship which is the case here where as he did not elaborate he did not ill articulate a particular demonstrate the facts of this case and how they fit into a legal framework they failed to provide any legal framework whatsoever so the i j a was left with no choice but to make do with what they had and that is it and you can tell from their record at the facts are there that there was persecution that they were sought out because of this membership in a transportation co op they were threatened for that very reason even at the funeral of mr b jeda they were threatened with their lives if they went back home which is why they escape your honor and counsel he did not bring out these arguments he did not bring these evidence before the i j a he did not put them within the relevant legal framework in order to even show asylum that if the spike this wealth of compelling evidence their case was doomed because he failed to do the bare minimum factually legally and on top of that he affirmatively cut off a viable avenue with relief it was also how that played into the nexus also how that persecution applied to them because of this group so it's much more than just being able to articulate how you know whether or not this is a compromise of a group but also so much that but we haven't actually decided it i look to see that there's a circuit split a healthy majority do recognize the possibility of that as a due process claim but i i take it you're asking us to actually officially recognize an error but i don't see where you you brief to really argued why you know the law on your own or regarding whether or not this is due process question right is it for getting the facts and get a general matter whether there is a due process right to effective assistance if you opinions upon the fundamental fairness of the hearing that is a due process violation and that individual even if need to then remove all proceedings has been denied their th amendment right to due process and there are other cases that  make that argument as well that show that the th amendment due process protect individuals and will proceedings and whenever an attorney is so deficient that it cuts off the relief that is a due in their home where they arrived one night demanding that they provide the services they refused they assaulted mr b a right there pushing him into miss look as they began to both fall into the floor and then they  demanded that she instead provide the services and when she refused they said if you do not collaborate with us we will hurt you we will kill you and your entire family that is just one example your honor of another instance that just goes beyond just them asking for money and be on just a murder that you know that characterizes happened by happening by happenstance however that is not the case if you look at the circumstances around the murder it is not just a crime gon bad this man was shot at least nine times by at least three different assailants and his vehicle about a one thousand steps away from the police station with his wallet still in his car and struck still parked there there was this was no robbery this is no instance of happenstance this was persecution because of his participation in the transportation co op and because of his political opinion that was pro law and against gang membership your honour's this is asylum case it is a strong asylum case and but for the attorneys deficient performance that was so agree just where he failed to elaborate on these facts that i just spoke of that are clearly in the record that failed to show how they fall within the legal framework of asylum and the fact that he cut off the political opinion ground of relief in asylum that always shows just how egregious yes leigh they were violated with regard to their th amendment right to due process that they did not have their fair being or that their facts were not heard and mrs lopez if the gaita she is not a sophisticated party and she relied on this attorney to do his job to about a political opinion even though she did not explicitly say to them i am against your gang activities i am pro law that was enough and that this court held that you do not have to full heartedly  where an expert or other fact testimony what have been extremely valuable because all the times that mr vietnam was assaulted before they did not make a police report because it was the consensus that the police were working with the gang members and that was the consensus and in this this town this community and had there been more factual information brought forward more evidence they could have called that she could call the sons were right there in the courtroom ready to testify he could have gotten telephonic at the chance he could have called an expert he did none of these things and it is clear from the transcript in the record that mr rodriguez that he did not even have a theory of the political opinion argument what so along to an organization that would be considered to pro government she had family members who work for the government she's buz and much more explicit pro government anti whoever they are physician would be ca and refused to help them refused to serve them was threatened multiple times he expressed that she also expressed that that night so she had her own political opinion but as you're saying the family members that there was there was more context around that may give the conclusion yes thank you it is shares in this case were not given their fair game court prior counsel did not elaborate on the facts of this case he did not bring them forth he did not make a legal opinion of this case he did not make a theory of this case he did not have the requisite legal knowledge in order to make a buyable claim the facts show that they were persecuted because of their particular social group and also because of their political opinion and this case requires a review and so that they may have their ferreting court as they are entitled to under the th amendment of the united states constitution articulate the social group he specifically said that social group consists of the family members of mr b a that and it's very common for people to fail to articulate their social group and he made a closing argument on the basis of that social group he also elicited testimony from mrs lopez that family members of other transportation cooperated members experienced the same types of threat the other bases for the ineffective assistance of counsel claim for example the failure to introduce expert witness testimony the failure to it call the two young men who are that to share the other case this the evidence in this case shows but the gang members were solely interested in forwarding their criminal endeavor and in the absence of any evidence that was identified in the motion tr was also a claim that counsel did not adequately prepare mrs lopez to testify but again we have no indication of what else she would have testified to beyond her testimony which was found credible yet and and of course the board has the matter was but in which it set forth the procedural requirement that meeting those requirements was not sufficient to establish an ineffective assistan claim particularly when the allegation that the council failed to undertake to make certain arguments or present certain evidence there must be something more than a theoretical description of what that evidence would have been testified about that would have given context to the claim to show that it was on account of a protected ground on the issue of political opinion for example in council failure to bring forth political opinion in the motion tree open we have missed lopez was a tenant of her political opinion but we have nothing more than that and the statement of an applicant possession of a political opinion the fact that she has a political opinion is not enough to show that she was targeted on account of that opinion and the board was not requiring her to tell beginning i am politically opposed to what the board with the thing with that there's no evidence in the record that she ever expressed a political opinion at all that she was involved in all and that would be an imputed political opinion the pitch is again not present here and to the extent that the police report shows the very violent of course its tragic  gaita the police report also states that police officers heard gunshots and immediately responded and that statement is inconsistent with the suggestion that the police are complicit  so that would further undermine the relying on the police report to show and in thai police corruption political opinion it also undermines the claim that the police were complicit on the issue of nexus to a particular social group the family of course being a particular social group we have the claim that mr b it is membership and transportation cooperated should be considered an aspect of that group but it would neither exhausted in the fact that it was not ready for the i j a and it was not raised in the motion trail so it was not exhausted on both count because that would be the stronger claim using that more particular social group doesn't that support the theory that the attorney handling this was and as with many of the gang claims that we see the sad truth is that the gang was totally interested in its criminal enterprise it was not motivated by any intimate toward this yes your honour's may please the court the government's arguments are undermined by a case i'd like to bring to the court's attention  because even after the latest iteration in matter bellyache from the attorney general that if l e a is not fully considered and that case it wasn't then a re man just for that quite frankly is and this goes to judge davis question there were numerous errors on the part forget about the substantial prejudice forget about the ineffective assistance for a moment but there are numerous errors that riddled the b iras in the i and the immigration judges decisions for example the fact that there is there was no persecution here well the case law is clear that there can be question that this was retaliatory action the murder of this family member ok was retaliation why was it a retaliation because they came to his doorstep they attacked him because he wouldn't transport gang members for their illicit activities he refuse and again this is important the government has presented absolutely no rebuttal abbots it's uncontroverted in the record so you have to take it out str husband is gunned down a one thousand steps from a police station and guess what they didn't take the wallet they didn't take the truck they didn't rob him this was retaliation what what what more nexus could the government require from my client this is not a case of just the private after that just goes out and wants to do some criminal activity that is an impoverished illogical and i'm sorry to say an absurd reading of the facts in this case so so forget about the fact that