NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ALONDRA CECILIA PATRICIA

MONTERO-ALVIZURES, 

Petitioner, 

 v. 

MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney 

General, 

Respondent.

No. 21-70368 

Agency No. A201-921-556 

MEMORANDUM*

On Petition for Review of an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals

Argued and Submitted March 8, 2023

Pasadena, California

Before: KLEINFELD and COLLINS, Circuit Judges.**

Alondra Cecilia Patricia Montero-Alvizures, a citizen of Guatemala, 

petitions for review of the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) 

upholding the order of the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denying her applications for 

asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against 

Torture (“Torture Convention”). We have jurisdiction under § 242 of the 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as 

provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** This matter is decided unanimously by a quorum of the panel. See 28 U.S.C. 

§ 46(d); Ninth Cir. Gen. Order 3.2(h).

FILED

AUG 4 2023

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
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Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and § 2242(d) of the 

Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1231 note. See 

Nasrallah v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1683, 1690–91 (2020). We review the agency’s legal 

conclusions de novo and its factual findings for substantial evidence. See BringasRodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051, 1059 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc). Under the 

substantial evidence standard, “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive 

unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the 

contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B). We deny the petition.

1. Substantial evidence supports the agency’s denial of Montero-Alvizures’s 

claims for asylum and withholding of removal. 

In this court, Montero-Alvizures argues that she suffered past persecution on 

account of her anti-corruption and anti-organized-crime political opinions and 

related political activities. While she made these claims to the IJ, she failed to 

raise them anywhere in her brief to the BIA. Because Montero-Alvizures has not 

exhausted before the BIA the claims that she raised in her opening brief in this 

court, the BIA did not address them. The Government has properly invoked 

Montero-Alvizures’s failure to exhaust, and so we decline to consider those claims. 

See Bare v. Barr, 975 F.3d 952, 960–961 (9th Cir. 2020) (explaining that 

exhaustion requires claims “to have first been raised in the administrative 

proceedings below and to have been sufficient to put the BIA on notice of what 
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was being challenged,” which requires more than “a general challenge to the IJ’s 

decision” (citations omitted)); cf. Santos-Zacarias v. Garland, 598 U.S. 411, 416–

23 (2023) (holding that the INA’s exhaustion requirement is not jurisdictional and 

may be waived or forfeited if not asserted by the Government). 

Before the BIA, Montero-Alvizures argued that she had been persecuted on 

account of her anti-abortion political opinion and her proposed particular social 

group of Guatemalan women who are viewed as property by their male partners. 

But in her opening brief to this court, Montero-Alvizures failed to challenge the 

BIA’s determination that any harms she suffered in Guatemala were not on 

account of her anti-abortion political opinion or her membership in this particular 

social group. As such, she has forfeited this claim. See Lopez-Vasquez v. Holder, 

706 F.3d 1072, 1079–80 (9th Cir. 2013).

Even reviewing those grounds for persecution that were exhausted before 

the BIA, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s lack of nexus 

finding. The BIA found that there was no clear error in the IJ’s determination that 

the harms Montero-Alvizures suffered were on account of a personal dispute with 

her ex-partner over their relationship and custody of their child, which cannot serve 

as grounds for asylum. See Garcia v. Wilkinson, 988 F.3d 1136, 1144–45 (9th Cir. 

2021) (“[P]urely personal retribution is not persecution on account of a protected 

ground.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The BIA further concluded that 
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there was no evidence that established a “persecutory” motive for the harms 

Montero-Alvizures suffered, and consequently, she had failed to establish a nexus 

between her political opinion or particular social group and the harms she suffered. 

Nothing in the record compels a contrary conclusion. 

2. Substantial evidence also supports the agency’s denial of relief under the 

Torture Convention. Montero-Alvizures failed to establish “that she will more 

likely than not be tortured with the consent or acquiescence of a public official if 

removed to her native country,” Xochihua-Jaimes v. Barr, 962 F.3d 1175, 1183 

(9th Cir. 2020), and the BIA found no clear error in the IJ’s decision that she did 

not meet that standard. In its analysis of her Torture Convention claim, the BIA 

did err in stating that Montero-Alvizures “was not physically harmed in 

Guatemala,” when in fact Montero-Alvizures had testified that she had been beaten 

by her ex-partner. But Montero-Alvizures failed to raise this error in her opening 

brief in this court, and so she has forfeited the issue. See United States v. Perez, 

116 F.3d 840, 845 (9th Cir. 1997). Even if the issue were not forfeited, there is no 

error warranting remand. In denying relief under the Torture Convention, the BIA 

provided alternative and independent reasons for affirming the IJ’s decision, which 

had not made any such mistake. Specifically, the BIA upheld the IJ’s conclusion 

that Montero-Alvizures had failed “to establish that anyone in Guatemala is even 

looking for [Montero-Alvizures], much less, desiring to torture her” or that the 
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Guatemalan government would acquiesce in any such torture. The BIA’s error 

regarding Montero-Alvizures’s past harm by her ex-partner does not vitiate this

finding concerning her failure to show a likelihood of future torture in which the 

Guatemalan government would acquiesce. The agency permissibly concluded, on 

this record, that Montero-Alvizures had failed to show such a likelihood.

PETITION DENIED.