* Of the District of Maine, sitting by designation.

United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 03-1180

JUAN ALICIO SAMAYOA CABRERA and

BLANCA MARGARITA VELASQUEZ,

Petitioners,

v.

JOHN ASHCROFT,

Respondent.

ON PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF

THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS

Before

Selya and Howard, Circuit Judges,

and Singal,* District Judge. 

Harvey Kaplan, with whom Ilana Greenstein, Maureen

O'Sullivan, Jeremiah Friedman and Kaplan, O'Sullivan & Friedman,

LLP were on brief, for petitioners.

Isaac R. Campbell, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration

Litigation, with whom Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney

General, and Papu Sandhu, Senior Litigation Counsel, were on

brief, for respondent.

May 4, 2004
1 Ms. Velasquez, Mr. Samayoa’s wife, is included in the asylum

petition based solely on Mr. Samayoa’s experiences. While this

opinion refers mainly to petitioner Samayoa, the decision rendered

applies to both petitioners.

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SINGAL, District Judge. Juan Alicio Samayoa Cabrera and

Blanca Margarita Velasquez, citizens of Guatemala,1applied for

asylum, relief under the Convention Against Torture, and

withholding of removal. The Immigration Judge ("IJ") denied the

applications, and the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA")

affirmed without opinion. Mr. Samayoa and Ms. Velasquez petition

for judicial review, claiming that the IJ erred in concluding

that they are ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal.

We affirm the BIA's decision.

I. Background

Juan Alicio Samayoa Cabrera is a fifty-four-year-old man

from the Quiche region of Guatemala. His claims for asylum are

based on his mistreatment at the hands of guerilla fighters in

Guatemala from 1982 to 1992, which he attributes to his political

opinion. Following the events described below, he came to the

United States illegally in 1992, and applied for asylum on

December 27, 1993. His case was finally heard by an Immigration

Judge on February 4, 2002. The oral decision rendered on that

date was not in his favor, and he appealed to the BIA. The BIA
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summarily affirmed the IJ's decision, and Samayoa petitioned this

court for judicial review. 

A. Facts 

The petitioners' testimony elicited the following facts.

Mr. Samayoa's first run-in with the guerillas occurred in 1982,

when his car was stopped by a group of guerillas who tied him up,

put a gun to his head and threatened to kill him in order to

steal gasoline from him. The guerillas warned Mr. Samayoa that

if he mentioned the incident to authorities, they would kill him,

and that they knew where he lived. Instead of following the

guerillas' instructions, he reported the incident to an army

colonel. The colonel advised him that he should leave town, but

Mr. Samayoa did not want to, so the colonel made him an aide to

the military commissioner, a volunteer position which entitled

him to carry a gun. Thereafter, Mr. Samayoa was promoted to

military commissioner, in which capacity he engaged in military

recruiting. He also became the leader of his neighborhood civil

patrol, a position that put him in charge of a group of five

hundred patrolmen that protected the village from guerilla

fighters. 

Mr. Samayoa received between thirty and fifty death threats

in the years after he became a military commissioner. The
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threats were addressed to him by name, and explicitly stated that

he would be killed by guerillas. In either 1987 or 1990, his

wife found a bomb under his car outside their house, which she

was able to deactivate before it detonated. In 1988, Mr. Samayoa

was falsely accused of kidnapping. He was told afterwards that

the plan had been for someone to kill him while he was in jail. 

In 1991, a land mine exploded on Mr. Samayoa's property

while he was walking to milk his cows. He was wounded in the

face and was immediately surrounded by about eight armed men.

(His son informed him later that there had been approximately

sixty guerillas altogether.) Mr. Samayoa escaped on foot after

fending them off with the pistol he had been issued by the

military. In the meantime, the guerillas destroyed his truck.

Soldiers who went looking for the guerillas that attacked Mr.

Samayoa were bombed, and seven soldiers were killed.

In 1992, Mr. Samayoa was shot while driving along a

mountainous road about forty kilometers from his home. Other

vehicles were traveling along the road as well, and Mr. Samayoa

swerved to avoid a bus when a land mine exploded nearby. At that

point, twenty-five to thirty guerillas ran towards his car,

shooting at him. Mr. Samayoa escaped when his passenger took

control of the vehicle and transported them to a hospital in
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Joyabaj. There was no fighting going on in the region at the

time, and no other vehicles on the road were subjected to such an

attack. While he was at the Joyabaj hospital, the building was

subject to guerilla surveillance, but Mr. Samayoa was smuggled

out and airlifted to a military hospital in Guatemala City. Mr.

Samayoa was in a coma for three days. He remained in intensive

care for a month and was guarded by two military personnel. 

Upon his discharge from the hospital, Mr. Samayoa was

unwilling to return to his home for fear of the guerillas, so his

wife rented a house in Guatemala City. He was put on active

payroll by the military and received outpatient treatment at the

hospital. Even after Mr. Samayoa had relocated to Guatemala

City, the guerillas continued to search for him. 

Mr. Samayoa determined that he could not remain in

Guatemala, and applied for a visa at the United States embassy.

His application was denied, and although the Guatemalan military

authorities offered to help him obtain a visa, he thought it best

to enter the United States illegally. Even after he had left the

country the guerillas continued to look for him.

B. The IJ's Decision 

The IJ did not make an express finding, one way or the

other, as to Mr. Samayoa's credibility, but concluded that he had
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not suffered persecution on account of one or more of the five

statutory grounds set forth in Section 101(a)(42)(A) of the

Immigration and Nationality Act. The IJ determined that the acts

suffered by Mr. Samayoa did not constitute persecution but were

instead attributable to generalized violence in the area.

Assuming for the sake of argument that Mr. Samayoa had been

persecuted in the 1992 incident, the IJ concluded that there had

not been a showing that he had been targeted on one or more of

the five statutory grounds. The IJ noted that Ms. Velasquez was

able to live peacefully in her home with hired security and that

the guerillas had not come looking for Mr. Samayoa since shortly

after he left Guatemala in 1992. The IJ noted that the civil war

in Guatemala ended some time ago, and that although there remains

a high level of crime, Mr. Samayoa did not appear to have a wellfounded fear of future persecution on one or more of the five

statutory grounds. Because Mr. Samayoa had not established

eligibility for asylum, he was not eligible for withholding of

removal. The IJ concluded that there had been no showing that

Samayoa or his wife were eligible for protection under the

Convention Against Torture.
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II. Discussion

On appeal, the BIA's findings of fact must be upheld "unless

any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the

contrary." 8 U.S.C § 1252(b)(4)(B); Laurent v. Ashcroft, 359

F.3d 59, 64 (1st Cir. 2004). Because the BIA summarily affirmed

the IJ's decision, we review the IJ's decision. Laurent, 359 F.

3d at 64 n.3. 

As a prerequisite to establishing eligibility for asylum, an

alien must establish that he is a refugee, as set forth in

section 101(a)(42)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

8 U.S.C. § 1158(b). In that section, "refugee" is defined as: 

any person who is outside any country of such person's

nationality or, in the case of a person having no

nationality, is outside any country in which such

person last habitually resided, and who is unable or

unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to

avail himself or herself of the protection of, that

country because of persecution or a well-founded fear

of persecution on account of race, religion,

nationality, membership in a particular social group,

or political opinion.

8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). In order to demonstrate that he is a

refugee, Mr. Samayoa must establish both that he suffers from a

well-founded fear of persecution and that the feared persecution

is based on one of the five statutory grounds. 
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The crux of Mr. Samayoa's petition for judicial review is

that the IJ erred when she found that Mr. Samayoa had not been

specifically targeted because of his opposition to the guerilla

movement given the number of threats and attempts he had been

subjected to. While Mr. Samayoa presents a sympathetic case and

his argument that he was specifically targeted has some merit, he

must also establish that he was persecuted on one of the five

statutory grounds.

Mr. Samayoa argues that his task is not to establish the

exact motivation of a persecutor, but only to demonstrate the

reasonableness of a motivation which is related to one of the

enumerated grounds. While an alien seeking asylum is not

required to provide direct proof of his persecutors' motives, he

must provide some evidence of such motives. INS v. EliasZacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 483-84 (1992). There is little to tie

the alleged persecution to Mr. Samayoa's imputed political

opinion other than the fact that after the first attack, he

initiated his involvement with the military in order to secure

the right to carry a weapon. Participation in a civil defense

patrol does not by itself compel a conclusion that an individual

is subject to politically-inspired persecution. See AguilarSolis v. INS, 168 F. 3d 565, 572 (1st Cir. 1999). Mr. Samayoa
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has not provided such evidence as would require a reasonable

factfinder to conclude that his fear of future persecution was

based on his actual or imputed political opinion. 

III. Conclusion

For the reasons set forth above, the order of the BIA is

affirmed.