Opinion ID: 4511499
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application to Petitioner’s Case

Text: Applying our case law to the undisputed facts here, Petitioner suffered past persecution. Considered within the entire context of Petitioner’s experience, the Sandinistas’ threat to Petitioner that they would murder her if she were ever caught alone was undoubtedly “concrete and menacing.” That context included the Sandinistas’ verbal threats to Petitioner while she was volunteering at a polling table on the day of the election; the burning of her family’s home after the election; the shooting of her convoy and the murder of her close compatriot, the mayor’s nephew; and the robbery of her workspace at gunpoint while she was preparing for the mayor’s inauguration. These incidents, like those in Gomez-Zuluaga, 527 F.3d at 342–43, and Fei Mei Cheng, 623 F.3d at 193–95, reflect an escalating pattern of mistreatment toward both Petitioner herself and the other local leaders of the Liberal Party that placed Petitioner in a constant state of oppressive fear and that culminated in the final death threat she received in the supermarket. We need not decide whether those prior incidents, individually or collectively, would suffice to establish persecution because the final death threat, considered in that context, surely did. That death threat to Petitioner was “concrete” because it was substantiated by a pattern of harassment encompassing property damage, threats of violence, and actual violence; and it was “menacing” because the Sandinistas’ murder of her political compatriot showed Petitioner that they were willing and able to add murder to the abuse they inflicted on her. The pattern of incidents, in other words, constituted a “severe affront[] to . . . life or freedom,” Gomez-Zuluaga, 527 F.3d at 341. 19