United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 21-1315

EBENEZER ODEI,

Petitioner,

v.

MERRICK B. GARLAND,

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL,

Respondent.

PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF

THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS

Before

Barron, Chief Judge,

Selya and Gelpí, Circuit Judges.

Stella B. Angwafo and Stella B. Angwafo Law Office on brief 

for petitioner.

Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Attorney General, Civil 

Division, United States Department of Justice, John S. Hogan, 

Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, and Andrea 

Gevas, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief 

for respondent. 

June 15, 2023
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SELYA, Circuit Judge. This case has its roots in a land 

grab that occurred long ago and far away. The petitioner, Ebenezer 

Odei, traces his membership in a particular social group back to 

events that occurred in his native Ghana in 1984 and claims that 

— if repatriated — he has a reasonable fear of persecution on 

account of his membership in that social group. The immigration 

judge (IJ) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) both rejected 

the petitioner's claim. He now seeks judicial review. After 

careful consideration, we deny the petition.

I

We briefly rehearse the relevant facts and travel of the 

case. On November 14, 2001, the petitioner entered the United 

States on a B-2 visa as a nonimmigrant visitor. He overstayed 

that visa but nonetheless attempted to secure legal status — well 

after the visa's expiry — through marriage to a United States 

citizen. By virtue of this marriage, he applied for an adjustment 

of status, and his wife concurrently petitioned, on his behalf, 

for an I-130 immigrant visa. Those efforts, though, came to 

naught: in September of 2009, the United States Citizenship and 

Immigration Services (USCIS) denied the visa petition on the ground 

that the couple had failed to prove the bona fides of their 

marriage. Consequently, the application for adjustment of status 

also was denied. 
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The Department of Homeland Security then notified the 

petitioner that he was subject to removal and ordered him to appear 

before the immigration court for removal proceedings. Those 

proceedings were stayed for some time to adjudicate additional 

successive I-130 petitions filed on the petitioner's behalf. In 

June of 2011, the petitioner's wife again sought an I-130 immigrant 

visa, which was denied when the couple failed to appear for a 

required interview with USCIS officials. In September of 2012, 

the couple divorced. The petitioner remarried in June of the 

following year, and his second citizen-spouse, like the first, 

filed an I-130 petition to his behoof. That petition was also

denied. 

Removal proceedings resumed in December of 2015. The 

petitioner conceded removability but cross-applied for withholding 

of removal and protection under the United Nations Convention 

Against Torture (CAT). In support, he testified that his family 

had been displaced from their cocoa farm in Ghana when a local 

chieftain expropriated the property in 1984. According to the 

petitioner, the chieftain demanded that his father relinquish the 

farm, and when his father refused, the chieftain retaliated by 

burning the farm and beating his parents. Still, the family 

remained in place. The chieftain was not pleased and had the 

petitioner and his brothers beaten. 
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Following this second act of violence, the family fled 

to the capital city of Accra, where they lived for fifteen years. 

Eventually, the petitioner travelled from there to the United 

States. He claimed that if returned to Ghana, he would be tortured 

and killed because his family never surrendered formal title to 

the land that was taken from them. 

The IJ was unpersuaded. She found that the petitioner 

was not a credible witness; that he had failed to show that he 

belonged to a persecuted social group; and that the persecution he 

claimed to have suffered was not on account of a statutorily 

protected ground but, rather, was due to the chieftain's desire to 

give the land to another family. The IJ also found that the 

petitioner had failed to establish a clear probability that he 

would be persecuted in the future should he be returned to Ghana. 

Accordingly, the petitioner's applications for withholding of 

removal and protection under the CAT were denied, and the IJ 

ordered him removed to Ghana. 

The petitioner appealed the IJ's denial of his 

application for withholding of removal (but not the denial of his 

CAT application) to the BIA. The BIA affirmed the IJ's decision, 

holding that the IJ's determination that the petitioner had failed 

to establish a causal connection between the chieftain's

predations and a statutorily protected ground was not clearly 

erroneous. Because that issue was dispositive of the appeal, the 
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BIA refrained from addressing any other aspects of the IJ's 

decision. After the BIA dismissed the petitioner's appeal, this 

timely petition for judicial review ensued. 

II

"Where the BIA does not adopt the IJ's findings, we 

review the BIA's decision rather than the IJ's." Aguilar-Escoto

v. Garland, 59 F.4th 510, 515 (1st Cir. 2023) (quoting Lin v. 

Mukasey, 521 F.3d 22, 26 (1st Cir. 2008)). In this instance, the 

BIA did not expressly adopt the IJ's decision. Instead, it held 

only that the IJ's finding on a dispositive issue was not clearly 

erroneous. Our review thus focuses on the BIA's decision. See

id. 

We review the BIA's legal conclusions de novo, albeit 

with "some deference to the agency's reasonable interpretation of 

statutes and regulations that fall within its sphere of authority." 

Jianli Chen v. Holder, 703 F.3d 17, 21 (1st Cir. 2012). "Our 

review of the factual findings of the agency proceeds pursuant to 

the substantial evidence standard." Sanchez-Vasquez v. Garland, 

994 F.3d 40, 46 (1st Cir. 2021). Under that deferential standard, 

we accept the BIA's findings "so long as they are supported by 

reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record 

considered as a whole." Id. (quoting Perez-Rabanales v. Sessions, 

881 F.3d 61, 65 (1st Cir. 2018)). Thus, we will uphold those 

findings unless "the record is such as to compel a reasonable 
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factfinder to reach a contrary determination." Id. (quoting PerezRabanales, 881 F.3d at 65).

III

To secure withholding of removal, a noncitizen must 

demonstrate a clear probability that, if removed to his homeland, 

he would be persecuted on account of his race, religion, 

nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political 

opinion. See Barnica-Lopez v. Garland, 59 F.4th 520, 527-28 (1st 

Cir. 2023); see also 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A). In order to 

establish that such persecution awaits him, the noncitizen must 

prove "a threshold level of past or anticipated serious harm, a 

nexus between that harm and government action or inaction, and a 

causal connection" between that harm and one of the statutorily 

protected grounds. Barnica-Lopez, 59 F.4th at 528. That burden 

can be satisfied by the petitioner's testimony if he is deemed 

credible, although the IJ may also require the submission of 

additional corroborating evidence, as long as it can reasonably be 

expected that such evidence can be obtained. See 8 U.S.C. 

§§ 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii); 1231(b)(3)(C). 

The petitioner mounts four challenges in his petition 

for review. First, he assigns error to the IJ's adverse 

credibility determination. Second, he assigns error to the IJ's 

determination that he is not a member of a particular social group 

consisting of members of his own family who are opposed to the 
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chieftain and corruption. Third, he argues that he is entitled to 

withholding of removal because he is not free to return to his 

family's farm in Ghana. Fourth, he assigns error to the BIA's 

affirmance of the IJ's determination that the seizure of his 

family's farm was not on account of a statutorily protected ground. 

We address each of these challenges in turn. 

A

The first two challenges can be quickly dispatched. The 

BIA did not address either the IJ's credibility determination or 

her rejection of the proposed definition of the social group to 

which the petitioner allegedly belonged (comprising members of the 

petitioner's own family who are opposed to the chieftain and 

corruption). The BIA affirmed the IJ's decision exclusively on 

the ground that the IJ did not clearly err in determining that the 

harm the petitioner suffered was not causally connected to his 

membership in a particular social group. In reaching this 

determination, the BIA implicitly assumed that the petitioner was 

credible and that he is a member of a particular social group. As 

we are reviewing the decision of the BIA, see Aguilar-Escoto, 59 

F.4th at 515, those assumptions hold here.1 

1 We note that in one instance in his briefing, the petitioner

recharacterizes his particular social group as members of his 

family "who have been deprived due to corruption from their 

patrimony." That group, albeit similar, would nonetheless be 

distinct from the particular social group that the petitioner

proffered before the BIA. The petitioner, however, never argued 
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B

As to his third challenge, the petitioner argues that 

because 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A) prohibits the removal of a 

noncitizen to a country in which the noncitizen's "life or freedom 

would be threatened," he cannot lawfully be removed to Ghana as he 

would lack the "freedom" there to return to his family's farm. 

But this is too parochial a view, and the petitioner offers no 

case law or other relevant authority to support the proposition

that so narrow a restriction on his freedom can amount to 

persecution. It is firmly settled in our jurisprudence that 

"arguments advanced in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by 

citations to relevant authority, are deemed waived." Ahmed v. 

Holder, 611 F.3d 90, 98 (1st Cir. 2010); see United States v. 

Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990). That stricture is 

controlling.2

to the BIA that he belonged to the former group, so a question of 

exhaustion emerges. Because the government has raised the 

exhaustion requirement and because the petitioner failed to argue 

before the BIA that he was a member of some additional social 

group, we find that such an argument is unexhausted. We therefore 

decline to consider it. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1); see also

Santos-Zacaria v. Garland, ___ S. Ct. ___, ___-___ (2023) [No. 21-

1436, slip op. at 3-11] (holding that administrative exhaustion 

requirement set forth by 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1) is not 

jurisdictional in nature but, rather, a claims-processing rule 

subject to forfeiture and waiver).

2 In all events, the case law is antithetic to the petitioner's 

position. See Miranda-Bojorquez v. Barr, 937 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 

2019) (explaining that government can rebut presumption that 

asylum applicant faces threat of future persecution in country of 
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C

This brings us to the petitioner's fourth challenge, 

which addresses the BIA's determination that the IJ did not commit 

clear error in finding that the harm suffered by the petitioner

was not attributable to any statutorily protected ground. A causal 

connection between the harm incurred and the petitioner's 

statutorily protected ground exists only if the protected ground 

"was 'one central reason' for the harm alleged." Sanchez-Vasquez, 

994 F.3d at 47 (quoting Singh v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 

2008)). "[T]he statutorily protected ground need not be the sole 

factor driving the alleged persecution . . . ." Barnica-Lopez, 59 

F.4th at 528 (quoting Loja-Tene v. Barr, 975 F.3d 58, 61 (1st Cir. 

2020)). But a "central reason" cannot be "incidental, tangential, 

superficial, or subordinate to another reason for harm." SanchezVasquez, 994 F.3d at 47 (quoting Singh, 543 F.3d at 5). 

The petitioner does not squarely address this issue in 

his opening brief other than to suggest that because chieftains 

play a significant role in Ghanaian governance, the BIA incorrectly 

characterized the family's dispute with the chieftain as a personal 

dispute unconnected to any statutorily protected ground. That 

suggestion, though, conflates two different elements of the 

persecution analysis: one element that requires a connection 

his nationality by showing that he can relocate to different part 

of that country); see also 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(b)(1)(i)(B).
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between the harm suffered and government action or inaction and 

another that requires that the harm be connected to a statutorily 

protected ground. See Barnica-Lopez, 59 F.4th at 528.

The BIA decision is not contrary to the petitioner's 

contention that the chieftain acted on behalf of the government. 

The BIA simply stated that reprisals perpetrated by government 

actors based on personal animosities are insufficient to establish 

a causal connection between the alleged harm and a protected 

ground. That statement is correct. See Sompotan v. Mukasey, 533 

F.3d 63, 71 (1st Cir. 2008) ("Events that stem from personal 

disputes are generally not enough to show the required nexus."). 

And — mindful of the teachings of the case law — the BIA affirmed 

the IJ's finding that the interpersonal conflict between the 

petitioner's family and the chieftain was unconnected to a 

statutorily protected ground for relief. 

The petitioner demurs. Attempting to parry the BIA's 

finding, he argues that it was legal error for the BIA to 

countenance one motive for the chieftain's actions to the exclusion 

of others. We agree, of course, that a noncitizen seeking relief 

need not demonstrate an unalloyed motive for persecution. All 

that is required is that a motive implicating a statutorily 

protected ground be "'one central reason' for the harm alleged." 

Sanchez-Vasquez, 994 F.3d at 47 (quoting Singh, 543 F.3d at 5). 
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Here, however, the discussion is academic. The

petitioner waited until his reply brief to raise this argument. 

It is thus waived. See Xin Qiang Liu v. Lynch, 802 F.3d 69, 75 

(1st Cir. 2015). 

IV

We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above, 

we deny the petition.

So Ordered.