guzman soria had a choice to make she and her family were confronted in the middle of the night by the police and she determined they were looking for somebody and she knew who this somebody was and where they were located she decided to tell the police officers what she knew which led to the arrest of her neighbors and some fifteen individuals miscues mom was afraid that having communicated this important information to the police would make her a target and so she fled her country and presented herself at the border for asylum could you help me a little when we tell you how i'm conceiving this and you educate me so that if i misconceiving it i've got it right ok we have had a real hard time figuring out what discrimination against  particular social group is it's sort of obvious to me that if the communist chinese say landlord should all be yes script of their assets and have maltreated it one way or another that's a social group or if th once we've gotten past that it's been hard and what we seem to have come up with generally in the th circuit is we defer to the b a to figure out what it means just like we do with that crime of moral t has any idea what it means i'm sure i once had an immigration judge tell me i don't think anyone knows what a social group is and then he denied for not belonging to a social group so i think the confusion is shared the only social group i can figure out here is  es if you're in prison once you're identified as a snitch any kind of snitch and you may need solitary to protect to be protected but to say that a whole country discriminates against snitches seems to take the concept too far and i think that's all you've got here right well the issue sounds like you're somewhat describing the issue of particularity who's in who's out but the board didn't rule on two issues on that issue one is you could call it nexus you could call it particularity one thing that hasn't been described particularly in the cases but that occurs to me is the discrimination has to be gets to a group not an individual right and that's where the statute is worded and i don't know if snitches are group i mean hope problem is just it's not all the woman in the village it's just her because they think that she told the cops where this guy was right so in matter of m e v g the board gives us a really useful hypothetical for determining the issue of social distinction whether or not the society at large sees the group as a group and the hypothetical they give is a former employees of an attorney general which they share immutable characteristics but nobody's going around thinking even a group themselves as i have a real sense of group but once according to the board if the group becomes persecuted if there is violence against a group then amongst the group there there arises a sense of self among sense of group amongst themselves and also perhaps among society that society could start to see ok these former employees perhaps had never thought about them in my life but now because they're being persecuted i'm seeing them as a group and so i think that's what happens here we have to understand the violence against snitches or informants is by its very design meant to be public meant to communicate a message to all of society that one this group exists and two if you become a member of the group these are the types of gruesome things that can happen to you but what was your client's evidence to the agency that she was in such a group means that she kind of made this in more informal not in court snitching what was her evidence that she was going to be targeted for that well there are people like her targeted for that either one right so in terms of the we did not alleged past persecution because she left the country so quickly which i think does actually speak to the sort of sense that informants are a group the fact that she was she understood herself to be in danger and she wasn't willing to wait around to see if she was going to be threatened or harmed  know so she did provide the information to the police directly the state department report does indicate that the police often work hand in glove with these criminal organizations there's also the fact that  evidence for that in this case they know that the police in some areas are the gangs they're just part of the gangs and others they are i can't remember about this area right well mitch mcconnell is one of the more dangerous parts of mexico and we do have general statements from the state department nothing specific about this locality necessarily and then it did you have evidence that other people who reported to police outside of court have been tortured or persecuted well there's several articles in the in the record that talk about for example individuals who were hung from an overpass and to some bow old and hung next to a sign that says this is what happens to snitch and that article actually says that this isn't a new phenomenon this is on page twelve of the record the quote there is nothing necessarily new about victims of the state does hang from bridges alongside or attached to crude narco banners labeled with accusations of collaborating with the government or the rival cartels and i think it's important to again consider the public nature of the persecution and and to ask ourselves how that public nature of the persecution informs the society at large about the existence of the group so usually i don't how much spearing it's committing crimes but usually what i understand is criminals try to hide the crimes that they commit they have you know hidden torture chambers or things of that nature but in this in this particular social group and in this case the record talks about beheadings on facebook so you could be scrolling your through your facebook and suddenly you're watching somebody getting their head cut off with a with a chainsaw along with the message that this is what happens to people who cross us or who snitch and so i think that he really what she really a snitch the police were already there they just got the wrong house it was the house next door so someone else informed on church wrong before she said no he might live next door right well again i think that the information that she provided was perhaps a critical missing link at that particular point and again there may be questions of particularity whether or not the group is a more f or overly broad but but again we're not to be put in outer balland then on an informant i mean if if someone's walking by a bank and robbers run out of the bank down the street and the police arrive a moment later and say which way did they go and he points in that in that direction does that make that individual a member of the particular social group an informant in this case i think if if to further develop the hypothetical if the individuals were then arrested and the pointing of the finger was the critical link between the person and either getting or getting away or being arrested then and perhaps they would fit in to the particular social group that we're proposing but again the board didn't even discuss and neither did the judge below and the judge did express something that i thought was was interesting in his decision as i just ask you about the b i a decision  i it says that we agree with the immigration judge determination that the lead respondent did not establish the police informants in mexico and their families are perceived or pull percy of police informants in mexico constitute particular social groups how do we know that there's anything wrong with that reasoning but it seems like you want to interpret this is not making a holding about whether she had enough evidence that this is a cognizable group that was distinct and recognizable but i'm not sure what how you read this to not make such a holding what the judge didn't mention particularities you just mentioned social distinction whether or not you know they're socially distinct and in fact the judge i mean this whole question of you know will she be perceived as harm come up honor the judge did say quote unfortunately she does risk the possibility that the individuals identified may seek retaliation i think that this is the experience we've had in history and i think when he said that he's reflecting something that we all sort of understand  intuitively that when people do these types of things they run the risk of being retaliated against especially in a society like the social group retaliation it's individual retaliation to hurt me or you worse but i'm not hurting you because you're part of a group where somebody else may be a problem for me it's just that you're a problem for me well i think i'm out of time so if i have time in my rebuttal address  think you can go ahead and address that and then we'll have you sit down ok well i think that again similar to the hypothetical that that the board gives us and then you know the group is not defined here by the persecution people who are afraid of the cartels or who fear retaliation it's defined by some other or other thing that they've done or some other immutable characteristic and that characteristic is having provided valuable information to the police now it's the persecution that gives rise to a sense of group i'll give you a minute for about also but you should sit down now i think you're taking your time may it please the court i mean carmichael for the government so the question before the court is whether petitioner has demonstrated that her proposed group of police informants meets the qualifications that the board has set out for being a particular social group and specifically whether that group is socially distinct within mexico and the record in order for you to conclude that the board carried the record would have to compel the contrary conclusion and the fact is that i don't know if observation not the board the board did not rely on that part so i think that that's relevant but also the immigration judges observation is really that it's personal retaliation it's personal crime it's a personal vendetta and it's well established within the circuit that general crimes and personal vendettas are not considered to be on account of a protected ground so even if how does that reconcile with and reaches three of us though because there are the testimony is what put the petitioners at risk it could be viewed as a vendetta but that was also viewed as our court by our court as a potential social group i think it's important st of all that you're correct it was a potential social group but also we would have had the whole opinion if we didn't think it was a plausible social group right but also because that conclusion was based on the board's decision and matter of cia and it was tied specifically to the fact that the person had testified in court and testifying in court one of the things that i noted in the discussion earlier was you know whether or not it's this idea of this link to that information whether it's vital link and if you're providing testimony in court you're providing that vital link if there is reason that somebody who provides testimony in court might be viewed differently than somebody who just provides casual information for the language to use obviously you're big language so maybe you can just tell me exactly where to find this  characteristics of the group and that witness protection law provided some of the evidence that the board needed to consider in the st instance to determine whether or not the group was socially distinct within mexico that similar type of evidence doesn't exist in this record well there is some evidence and the record that that there is a witness protection law st of all she hasn't actually provided testimony it's not clear that she would that that's because that she would be within a group of people covered by that law but also importantly that discussion of that law it seems like that's evidence that salvadoran society considered this group to be a distinct group but it doesn't seem like that's the only way to get a group to be a distinct group you know maybe this petition has a different kind of evidence about mexico right and i think that that's that's exactly it and that's the problem that there isn't a different kind of evidence in this record and in enrquez they were looking they looked at this law they determined that the law was good evidence that could support the conclusion that there was a particular social group here if we examine the evidence you know the board came to the conclusion that the evidence did not support the conclusion that people who provided information to the police were socially distinct now the record has it seems that  your interpret in this differently than your opposing counsel so was the council's are you saying that all the board held is because she didn't testify in court she can't possibly count and in some ways that is what you're arguing to us as well so if we think that's an error then do we need to i don't think that i don't think that the issue is that because she didn't testify she can't possibly qualify it's that she didn't testify and there's no other evidence in the record that supports people who don't testify qualify to the when we when we look at the evidence of record there's four articles and the mexican human rights report the mexican human rights report doesn't say anything about witnesses informants or witness protection there's there's not a section of the human rights report that discusses it there's no discussion of the witness of a witness protection law there is a reference to a witness protection law an article entitled why mexico's managed witness protected witnesses is the disaster that's it's not clear she would even be covered by that witness protection law having not formally interacted with the police or provided testimony in court but to the extent that a witness protection law might demonstrate that there is a distinct social group the fact that there's a lack of a working program would suggest the opposite the article states that the government used only three hundred and seventy nine protected witnesses during the entirety of president calderon six your administration why doesn't that just show that she's more at risk well again it's the question here isn't risk it's whether or not it's viewed it's viewed as a as a distinct group within society so even if she is at risk at a personal level and it's not clear that the record actually establishes that but that wasn't the basis of the board's decision but even if she is that risk at a personal level and less that risk is connected to her membership in a particular social group i purposes of asylum they are i think there's also an issue here about the relationship between the persecutors perception and whether or not it's a group and the board has explained that that the persecutors perception is not the most important aspect and it's part of it may be part of the it may be part of the evidence that's considered but you're looking not just at the persecutors perception but again at society's perception now this is particularly important here because essentially the only evidence in the record that she might be a member a group is evidence that she's afraid that the persecutor is going to retaliate against her well no no that's not right the evidence that she's in a group is that it's an contradicted and undisputed that when the cops came to the wrong house she mexican society views people who provide information to the police as a distinct group that set apart from the rest of society that it's a discrete subset of society and her primary evidence on that point where there could be so and i just wonder whether zero i suppose providing information to the americans about who's an isis member in iraq that could be a dangerous thing if isis controls territory well i think that this is really this is a really important point actually is that it's society suspect specific so someone in iraq providing information to the police is not actually in the same situation as somebody in mexico providing information to the police and somebody as role that might be a particular social group an important if you're a land owner in canada probably not so we have to look at this within the context of the specifics society and that's where the country conditions evidence is really important and the country conditions evidence here demonstrates that gangs and cartels harm people who go against them in any way the discussion about the internet snitches it's not actually addressing people who provide information to the police it's addressing people who provide information on social media journal and journalists and this suggestion is that gang members hurt people who aren't part of the gang and who provide any kind of information or talk bad about them and they kind of indiscriminately and that does not support the conclusion much less compel the conclusion that people who provide information to the police are in fact a distinct social group within mexican society do any of the cases subsequent to the end refuse reverse give you warning which that matters here in that case and in that case they discussed the the types of evidence that are important and the fact that it is a society by society and evidence pacific and curry and i think that that is helpful here thank you counsel thank you well give you a minute for abo enrquez that says specifically that this court did not intend to suggest that quote the public nature of enrquez reverses testimony is essential to her eligibility for asylum so i think that's too narrow of a reading of that case i also think can i do that i mean all of the court as opposed to a legislature can do is decide the case in front of it can they legislate for the cases where the person is not a witness i think that's exactly right i think every case needs to be considered on their own facts i also think the respondents reading in the agency's reading of the evidence is frankly too dismissive in limited they cite in their brief on page two or three of the record and what the respondent says that this article contains no meaningful information about police informants that same page they cite to page two or three says that criminal organizations post these gruesome photos to facebook or social media quote warning civilians not to snitch on them to authorities so the respondent the agency are saying these articles don't say anything about what we're talking about and and actually they do so we're hoping for a fair reading of the evidence and  d we think that the case should be remanded to consider the record and also to consider the legal errors that were were made below thank you thank you both sides of the very helpful arguments in the cases