Opinion ID: 28756
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Legal Error in the Asylum Claim

Text: Ontunez first asserts on appeal that the BIA applied an incorrect legal standard to his request for asylum. We review the 10 BIA's conclusions of law de novo. Mikhael v. INS, 115 F.3d 299, 302 (5th Cir. 1997). We review the decision of the BIA, and reach the underlying decision of the immigration judge only if that decision has some impact upon the BIA's opinion. Id. Section 208(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a), grants the Attorney General the discretion to permit asylum to an alien who is a “refugee,” a term which is defined as an alien who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her country of origin 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.” See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). Ontunez's legal error appeal concerns the “on account of” language, which requires the alien to prove some nexus between the persecution and the five protected grounds. See generally INS v. Elias Zacharias, 112 S.Ct. 812 (1992). Ontunez claims that the BIA looked at his evidence only as proof of economic conflict without considering that it also demonstrates a political struggle. Therefore, Ontunez argues, the BIA applied too stringent a standard and effectively required him to demonstrate that his persecution was primarily on account of a protected ground rather than merely that his persecution had some nexus to a protected ground. Ontunez relies upon Rivas-Martinez v. INS, 997 F.2d 1143 (5th Cir. 1993), a case in which the BIA incorrectly applied an “either- 11 or” analysis to the “on account of” requirement. In RivasMartinez, El Salvadorean FMLN guerillas ordered Rivas to help them in their struggle against the government, but she refused. Id. at 1145. She told the guerillas she could not help them because she was a widowed mother and had to give constant care to a small child; she actually refused because she strongly supported the government. Id. When the guerillas refused to accept her proffered reason, she chose to flee rather than support the FMLN. Id. While the immigration judge granted her asylum, the BIA reversed because it reasoned that Rivas had given a non-political reason for her refusal and thus logically could not have been persecuted “on account of” a political opinion as required in the Act. Id. On appeal, this court reversed the BIA and remanded for reconsideration. Without examining the sufficiency of Rivas's evidence, we found that the nexus requirement is not an “either-or” proposition. Instead, the proper standard allows the applicant’s testimony to prove the necessary persecution even though other evidence fails to advance her cause. Thus, while Rivas offered a non-political excuse to the guerillas, it was error for the BIA to categorically prevent her from showing political persecution through other evidence. After all, the guerillas may have known her statement was false because they had other knowledge of her politics. Id. at 1147-48. Accordingly, we remanded to the BIA for reconsideration. Id. 12 It is true that Rivas-Martinez counsels that the applicant must merely demonstrate some nexus between persecution or a wellfounded fear of persecution and one of the conditions enumerated in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42), notwithstanding evidence that persecution may have also been based upon other reasons. The BIA correctly applied this standard to Ontunez's case, however. The BIA stated in its opinion: “Regardless of the fact that the Facusse Group may have been aware of the respondent's claimed political opinion, we find that based on the record before us, the respondent failed to establish that the Facusse Group's alleged destruction of his home and crops and threats to kill him are in any way related to his political opinion, rather than to the Facusse Group's desire to retaliate against him or intimidate him for his actions in convincing the members of the land cooperative of which he was a leader to not give up the cooperative's lands to the Facusse Group, which land the Facusse Group wanted to complete a business deal with foreign investors.” (emphasis added) Unlike Rivas-Martinez, in which the BIA clearly stated an incorrect legal standard, the BIA appears to have stated and applied the correct legal requirement. The BIA asked the correct question: does the evidence demonstrate persecution or fear of persecution “on account of” political opinion? They state the standard as “in any way related to,” which admittedly is not a word-for-word restatement of the standard. Yet, it demonstrates that the BIA understood the necessity of a nexus and found that no nexus existed, thus arguably construing the proper legal standard even more generously in Ontunez's favor. We therefore do not read 13 the BIA's opinion as holding that Ontunez could never prove a nexus between his political opinion and persecution by the landlords because his evidence demonstrates an economic motive. Instead, the BIA simply held that Ontunez's evidence showed no motive of the persecutors other than a private, economic one and failed to establish persecution to any extent on account of or motivated by Ontunez’s political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The BIA did not disregard mixed motive; Ontunez failed to meet his burden of proof of a mixed motive. Rivas-Martinez therefore does not apply.10 This court addressed similar language in Girma v. INS, 283 F.3d 664 (5th Cir. 2002). In Girma, the petitioner claimed that the INS had failed to properly comprehend the “mixed motive” doctrine, erroneously requiring Girma to exclude all possibilities other than the protected factors. Id. at 667. Girma relied heavily on the BIA's use of the words “rather than,” id. at 668, which suggested the either-or dynamic forbidden in mixed motive cases. After deciding that other portions of the opinion showed the BIA had in fact applied the mixed motive standard correctly, this Court stated that: 10 Moreover, in Rivas-Martinez the guerillas who threatened Rivas were an overtly political anti-government guerilla force, which immediately suggested a nexus between Rivas’s political stand and the actions of the FMLN. Here, Ontunez's enemies are not shown to have any political agenda. This is another distinction between Ontunez's case and Rivas's. 14 The BIA's use of the phrase 'rather than,' was not an expression of a mutual exclusivity standard between protected and unprotected grounds but an explanation of its findings concerning the sufficiency of the evidence relative to multiple possible motivating grounds, two of which are protected and one which is not. Id. We apply the same analysis and reach the same conclusion. While Ontunez strenuously disagrees with the BIA's conclusion, and while the BIA used language more equivocal than would be ideal, Ontunez has not shown that the BIA misunderstood the standard to be applied to his case. Ontunez's claim of legal error must fail, and accordingly we will affirm the BIA's decision.