Opinion ID: 3002516
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Flores Torres Family

Text: From 1959 to 1979, Guadalupe Torres gave birth to eight children in Comayagua, a village in Honduras. Five of these children were boys. The oldest son, Mario Noe, was born in 1959. The next three sons—Luis Elias, Gerardo Isaac, and Juan Carlos—were born in 1962, 1969, and 1977, respectively. The youngest child, Pedro Alfredo, is the petitioner in this matter and was born in 1979. The children’s father left the family shortly after Pedro’s birth. Pedro’s four older brothers were conscripted into the Honduran navy, where each spent at least some time at the naval base in Amapala, near the El Salvadoran border. While serving, each of the four older sons endured brutal mistreatment at the hands of his superiors. Three of the four ultimately deserted the navy to escape these abuses. Because Pedro’s claims are based largely on his brothers’ experiences within the Honduran military, those experiences merit some discussion. Mario is the only Torres son not considered a military deserter. Mario served for approximately one year, during which time his arm was broken and his ear punctured, resulting in permanent hearing damage. He escaped, only to be captured and put back into active service. At one 4 No. 08-1614 point, Mario, Luis, and Gerardo were all serving in the Honduran military at the same time. This prompted the navy, due in part to heavy lobbying by Gerardo, to release Mario pursuant to a Honduran law that pro- hibited any one family from having more than two members in the military. The second son, Luis, suffered two broken arms from a severe beating with a baton and fled the navy soon thereafter. Soldiers found him in a hospital and returned him to duty. After enduring further mistreatment, Luis escaped again, this time with a broken leg. When the military found Luis the second time, it determined that his disabled condition rendered him useless to serve and designated him a deserter. The actions of the third son, Gerardo, were particularly aggravating to the military. In addition to lobbying for Mario’s discharge, Gerardo refused to commit war crimes, citing his Christian faith to explain his unwillingness to kill his innocent countrymen. Gerardo was imprisoned for fifteen days, deprived of food, and savagely beaten. As further punishment, his commander made Gerardo walk through a field of land mines while the commander lobbed grenades in his direction, one of which tore away one of Gerardo’s legs and ravaged his back with shrapnel. His commander left Gerardo to die in the mine field, but Gerardo’s compatriots helped him escape alive. Faced with what he felt was a certain death if he returned to his unit, Gerardo deserted. Juan Carlos, only two years Pedro’s senior, was conscripted into the Honduran navy in 1994 at the age of No. 08-1614 5 seventeen, one year before he was of legal age to serve. He was singled out for abuse because of Gerardo’s exploits. Once, when Juan Carlos fell during a run, a superior officer slashed his leg with a bayonet, inflicting an injury that required surgery. Following the operation, doctors told Juan Carlos that he needed two months to recover; instead, he was forced back into training after only fifteen days. His unhealed leg made it impossible for him to perform, and the premature exercise reopened his wound. Juan Carlos deserted in 1995. Today, two of the brothers, Mario and Luis, live secretly in Honduras, afraid of military retribution for their family’s history. Gerardo and Juan Carlos both escaped to the United States. Gerardo was granted asylum in 1994 and died one year later, at the age of twenty-five, from brain cancer. Juan Carlos was granted asylum in 1995 and is now a United States citizen. He resides in Elkhart, Indiana, near two of his sisters, both of whom are legal permanent residents. As a result of these disturbing circumstances, repeated not once but four times, the tale of the Flores Torres brothers has apparently gained some notoriety within Honduran military circles: the Flores Torres clan is known as a family of deserters. Juan Carlos was the first son punished by the military in retribution for his brothers’ exploits. His past persecution on account of his family formed the basis of his successful asylum claim. As we will discuss below, Pedro, the youngest son and the last to serve in the military, also was forced to pay for the perceived offenses of his four brothers. 6 No. 08-1614 B. Pedro Flores Torres’s Tenure in the Honduran Army Born September 26, 1979, Pedro Alfredo Flores Torres attended school in Comayagua until age eleven. For the next eleven years, he painted automobiles for car repair shops, earning money to help support his mother. Pedro stated in both his written asylum application and his testimony before the immigration judge that in February 2002, two Honduran soldiers left notice at Guadalupe’s home that Pedro had twenty-four hours to report for military duty. Although military service is no longer compulsory in Honduras, Pedro testified that he felt he “did not have any other option” but to enlist. If he did not, Pedro believed that he would be found and beaten, or worse, would simply “disappear.” The next day, Pedro reported to the Primer Battalon de Artilleria, an inland army base near the town of Zambrano, where he became a member of the artillery corps. According to Pedro’s testimony, upon reporting for duty he was confronted by his commanding officer, Colonel Luis Martinez. Pedro testified that Martinez said to him, “I was waiting. . . . You are the last one in the family.” Pedro claimed that he was subjected almost immediately to physical and mental abuse from his superi- ors—mistreatment above and beyond anything suffered by other soldiers. Pedro stated that officers and other soldiers called him degrading names and violently beat him. According to his affidavit, Pedro’s fellow soldiers and a superior officer told Pedro that his mistreatment was “because of [his] brothers.” No. 08-1614 7 Pedro mounted two unsuccessful escape attempts during his first six months of service. The first, which came approximately five months into Pedro’s tenure, ended with a savage beating at the hands of military guards who apprehended Pedro in the act of fleeing. The second came only a week later and again ended with a beating from a guard’s baton. Following the second attempt, Pedro was stripped of his clothing and locked in solitary confinement, a place Pedro called “the hole.” In his affidavit, Pedro said the hole was “what hell must be like.” A darkened room measuring one meter on all sides, the hole provided no space for its captive to lie down. There was little ventilation, and the heat was intense. Because he could not leave, Pedro was forced to use the hole to relieve himself. For forty days, Pedro remained trapped, nude, in his own excrement; the stench was overwhelming. During those forty days, Pedro was given beans and tortillas once a day, as well as two small servings of water. When he finally emerged, Pedro had lost forty pounds, one-third of his body weight. Pedro discussed the name calling, the beatings, the two failed escape attempts, and the forty days of solitary confinement in both his written asylum application and his testimony. During his testimony before the immigration judge, however, Pedro discussed several additional examples of abuse for the first time. In the first, Colonel Martinez ordered Pedro stripped nude and placed in a large, water-filled barrel. The water was high enough that only Pedro’s nose remained above the surface. Pedro stated that his first time in the water 8 No. 08-1614 barrel occurred one month after he enlisted; the last was in July 2003, one month before he successfully escaped. On questioning by the immigration judge, Pedro testified that he was subjected to the water barrel on approximately eighty different occasions, and that he was sometimes held in the barrel for as long as ten hours; other times he was held overnight. He further testified that fifteen times medics had to pump his chest when he was pulled from the water barrel. Martinez told Pedro that the water barrel was “to pay for the escape of [his] brothers.” The second relevant chain of events that emerged during Pedro’s testimony involved mock killings at the hands of Colonel Martinez. Pedro stated that Martinez would tell him, “I’m going to kill you,” place a pistol to Pedro’s head, and pull the trigger. The gun, unbeknownst to Pedro, was unloaded. Pedro testified that Martinez said this was to make Pedro “pay for [his] brothers’ desertion.” The first of “many times” these mock executions occurred was two to three weeks after Pedro joined the army. The final example of mistreatment that Pedro discussed for the first time during his immigration hearings was Colonel Martinez forcing him to run nude in front of his unit. According to Pedro, one month into his time with the army, Martinez forced Pedro to run completely naked during a training run, with nothing covering him but a rifle slung across his back and a second rifle that he carried in his arms. He was even denied footwear. Pedro testified that Martinez ordered his soldiers to “[p]ut this man to run until he falls dead.” Pedro also stated, in testimony that was often jumbled because of No. 08-1614 9 language difficulties and the IJ’s frequent interruptions, that Martinez told him, “[Y]ou have to pay for what your brothers did for their escape because they violated. They defy the army.” Pedro stated that this occurred on numerous occasions. Seventeen months after he joined the Honduran army, Pedro succeeded in escaping during a military celebration. After a brief visit with his mother, whom the military had prevented Pedro from seeing during his time in the army, Pedro began his journey north to seek refuge with his family in the United States. He now lives near his brother and two sisters in Elkhart. C. Prior Decisions by the Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals Immigration Judge Cuevas held a series of three hearings on April 19, April 25, and May 31, 2006. The IJ played an active role in the hearings, frequently interjecting himself into the testimony. At the conclusion of the proceedings, the IJ issued an oral decision denying Pedro’s requests for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. The IJ based his decision on what he found to be Pedro’s lack of credibility. The IJ granted Pedro’s alternative request for voluntary departure. The BIA summarily affirmed the IJ’s decision in a written opinion issued on February 15, 2008. 10 No. 08-1614