Opinion ID: 4544576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: analysis

Text: Substantial evidence does not support the BIA’s determination that Petitioner failed to meet her burden of proof under CAT that she would more likely than not be tortured, with the consent or acquiescence of a public official, if returned to Mexico. The BIA reached its determination by misapplying our precedents regarding acquiescence of a public official and regarding the possibility of safe relocation, as well as by making or affirming factual findings that are directly contradicted by the record. Contrary to the BIA’s determination, we hold that the existing record compels the conclusion that Petitioner has met her burden under CAT. To be eligible for relief under CAT, an applicant bears the burden of establishing that she will more likely than not be tortured with the consent or acquiescence of a public official if removed to her native country. AvendanoHernandez, 800 F.3d at 1078–79. “Torture is an extreme form of cruel and inhuman treatment and does not include lesser forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that do not amount to torture.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(2). The threat of imminent death, whether directed at the applicant or someone the applicant knows, may constitute torture. See id. §§ 1208.18(a)(4)(iii)–(iv). Rape and sexual assault may constitute torture, and “certainly rise[] to the level of torture for CAT purposes” when inflicted due to the victim’s sexual orientation. Avendano-Hernandez, 800 F.3d at 1079. In evaluating a CAT claim, “the IJ must consider all relevant evidence; no one factor is determinative.” XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 15 Maldonado v. Lynch, 786 F.3d 1155, 1164 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc). Relevant evidence includes: (i) Evidence of past torture inflicted upon the applicant; (ii) Evidence that the applicant could relocate to a part of the country of removal where he or she is not likely to be tortured; (iii) Evidence of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights within the country of removal, where applicable; and (iv) Other relevant information regarding conditions in the country of removal. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(3). “CAT claims must be considered in terms of the aggregate risk of torture from all sources, and not as separate, divisible CAT claims.” Quijada-Aguilar v. Lynch, 799 F.3d 1303, 1308 (9th Cir. 2015).
“Acquiescence of a public official requires that the public official, prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his or her legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(7). “Government acquiescence does not require actual knowledge or willful acceptance of torture; awareness and willful blindness will suffice.” Aguilar-Ramos v. Holder, 594 F.3d 701, 705–06 (9th Cir. 2010). However, “a general ineffectiveness on the government’s part to investigate and prevent crime will not suffice to show acquiescence.” Andrade-Garcia v. Lynch, 828 F.3d 829, 836 (9th Cir. 2016). 16 XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR In Madrigal v. Holder, 716 F.3d 499 (9th Cir. 2013), we considered an asylum and CAT case specifically involving Los Zetas in Mexico. Regarding the relationship between public officials and Los Zetas, we said: Significant evidence in the record calls into doubt the Mexican government’s ability to control Los Zetas. The available country conditions evidence demonstrates that violent crime traceable to drug cartels remains high despite the Mexican government’s efforts to quell it. ... Furthermore, notwithstanding the superior efforts of the Mexican government at the national level, corruption at the state and local levels “continue[s] to be a problem.” Many police officers are “involved in kidnapping, extortion, or providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of, organized crime and drug traffickers,” which leads to the “continued reluctance of many victims to file complaints.” . . . [C]orruption is also rampant among prison guards, and [Zetas] prisoners can and do break out of prison with the guards’ help. Id. at 506–07 (citations omitted) (quoting U.S. Dep’t of State, 2008 Human Rights Report: Mexico (2009)). As to acquiescence for CAT purposes, we said: Importantly, an applicant for CAT relief need not show that the entire foreign government would consent to or acquiesce in his torture. . . . Voluminous evidence in the record explains that corruption of public XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 17 officials in Mexico remains a problem, particularly at the state and local levels of government, with police officers and prison guards frequently working directly on behalf of drug cartels. . . . “[I]t is not contrary to the purpose of the CAT . . . to hold Mexico responsible for the acts of its officials, including low-level ones, even when those officials act in contravention of the nation’s will.” Id. at 509–10 (quoting Ramirez-Peyro v. Holder, 574 F.3d 893, 901 (8th Cir. 2009)). In Barajas-Romero v. Lynch, 846 F.3d 351 (9th Cir. 2017), a case involving another drug cartel in Mexico, we further clarified the standard we applied in Madrigal. See id. at 354, 363. The BIA had reasoned that “the danger [the petitioner] faced from the drug cartel and corrupt police did not establish government involvement because Mexican law, and national policy to root out the corruption, established the absence of official acquiescence.” Id. at 363. In other words, the BIA reasoned that acquiescence by “rogue” public officials is not enough. See id. We rejected BIA’s “rogue official” exception as inconsistent with Madrigal. Id. To the contrary, a rogue public official is still a “public official” under CAT. We emphasized this point again in Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc), a case involving a Mexican applicant who was physically and sexually abused by family members and a neighbor during his childhood and teenage years because of his perceived sexual orientation. See id. at 1056. Applying the related asylum standard that asks whether a government is “unable 18 XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR or unwilling to control” a persecutor, we stressed that highlevel government efforts, however important and laudable, do not necessarily reflect low-level government actors on the ground. See id. at 1072. We specifically recognized the difficulties that the national Mexican government has had in controlling violence against LGBTQ individuals and in controlling drug cartels, in part because state and local officials are among the perpetrators and are involved with the cartels. See id. (citing Avendano-Hernandez, 800 F.3d at 1081; Madrigal, 716 F.3d at 507); id. at 1074–75. Although the BIA cited Barajas-Romeros in its decision here, its interpretation of the facts still suffered from the same mistake we identified in Madrigal, Barajas-Romeros, and Bringas-Rodriguez. Both the IJ and the BIA relied on national efforts to combat drug cartels and the corruption of public officials in order to find that “the government” would not acquiesce in any torture Petitioner might suffer. Yet the record compels the conclusion that the corruption of public officials remains a problem, including specifically with regard to Los Zetas. 7 The BIA even admitted that “there are corrupt officials.” 7 There is extensive record evidence that many public officials acquiesce in, if not actively further, the unlawful actions of Los Zetas, and that Los Zetas commit torture: The 2016 State Department report states that “from 2009 to 2012, the Zetas transnational criminal organization, allegedly in collusion with police, carried out mass disappearances.” The report also states that “police, particularly at the state and local level, were involved in kidnapping, extortion, and providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of, organized crime and drug traffickers.” A 2017 Dallas Morning News article stated that, “The internal fracturing of Mexico’s once mighty criminal groups, including the Zetas, XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 19 In addition to the extensive country conditions evidence indicating the prevalence of acquiescence by public officials in the torture committed by Los Zetas generally, Petitioner testified that she was personally beaten severely and threatened with death at gunpoint by a member of Los Zetas, while Mexican police officers looked on and did not nothing but laugh. This testimony, which the IJ found credible, establishes the acquiescence of public officials in a past instance of torture. Cf. Bringas-Rodriguez, 850 F.3d at 1074 (Mexican police laughed at petitioner’s gay friend who reported sexual abuse). 8 The BIA erred in concluding that Petitioner’s testimony about this incident was insufficient in have led to soaring violence here [in Nuevo Laredo] and across the country . . . [V]iolence has been fueled by fractures within the longdominant Zetas, now split into two warring gangs . . . . Widespread corruption within Mexican government and security forces, and impunity, is also spreading the lawlessness.” A 2017 Independent article reported that Los Zetas murdered a woman whose daughter was kidnapped and murdered by Los Zetas five years prior. The woman had provided police with information that allowed them to capture her daughter’s killers, and had founded a support group for parents of missing children. A 2012 LA Times article reported that Los Zetas use particularly horrific methods. The article reported on Los Zetas mutilating 49 people and piling their bodies—with heads, hands, and feet missing—by the side of the road leading to the U.S. border. The article stated that “[t]he Zetas were built with deserters from the Mexican army’s elite airborne special forces and then augmented by hardened commandos from Guatemala’s Kaibiles, a notorious military unit trained by US advisors.” 8 Even if we credit Respondent’s argument that Petitioner’s testimony was ambiguous as to whether the police officers participated in the laughter of other onlookers, Petitioner’s testimony is not ambiguous as to the most relevant point: Mexican police officers observed Petitioner being assaulted and threatened at gunpoint and did nothing to help her. See Avendano-Hernandez, 800 F.3d at 1079 n.2. 20 XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR light of more recent country conditions evidence. As explained above, the country conditions evidence shows that corruption of government officials, especially of the police with regard to drug cartels, and specifically with regard to Los Zetas, remains a major problem in Mexico. The country conditions evidence certainly does not indicate that lowlevel government corruption has been so rectified as to render insufficient Petitioner’s testimony regarding acquiescence by specific police officers in Petitioner’s specific circumstances. Furthermore, Petitioner testified, and the IJ credited her testimony, that Luna was able to bribe Mexican officials in 2010 to put the mother of some of his other children in jail after that mother reported Luna or his family for threatening her and taking her children. This testimony further establishes that there are Mexican officials willing to aid the unlawful behavior of Luna, Luna’s relatives, and other Zetas members. This inference is not diminished by the fact that, as the IJ noted, Petitioner does not know if the mother is still in jail. In summary, the record compels the conclusion that Petitioner has established the requisite level of acquiescence by public officials to satisfy that aspect of her CAT claim. She testified to multiple instances of such acquiescence in the past involving her personal circumstances, and presented extensive country conditions evidence documenting the widespread problem of public official acquiescence in Zetas crimes generally. II. Evidence that the Applicant Could Safely Relocate Among its assessment of “all evidence relevant to the possibility of future torture,” the IJ must consider “[e]vidence that the applicant could relocate to a part of the XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 21 country of removal where he or she is not likely to be tortured.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(3)(ii) (emphasis added). The regulation “does not place a burden on an applicant to demonstrate that relocation within the proposed country of removal is impossible.” Maldonado, 786 F.3d at 1164 (overruling prior cases suggesting otherwise). Nor, however, “do the regulations shift the burden to the government[,] because they state that the applicant carries the overall burden of proof.” Id. Instead, the IJ must simply “consider all relevant evidence; no one factor is determinative.” Id. Although the BIA cited Maldonado here, and neither the IJ nor the BIA expressly stated that the burden was on Petitioner to prove impossibility of relocation, their analyses strongly indicate that they applied this reasoning anyway. The BIA concluded that the IJ “found an absence of evidence indicating that the applicant could not relocate” (emphases added). The IJ stated that “Mexico is a large country” and “[i]t seems unlikely that there is nowhere in Mexico that the applicant could live without being harmed.” Neither the IJ nor the BIA cited any affirmative “[e]vidence that [Petitioner] could relocate to a part of [Mexico] where . . . she is not likely to be tortured.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(3)(ii); cf. Singh v. Whitaker, 914 F.3d 654, 661 (9th Cir. 2019) (under related relocation inquiry in asylum context, the BIA must conduct an “individualized analysis” to determine whether “there are one or more general or specific areas within the petitioner’s country of origin where he has no well-founded fear of persecution and where it is reasonable to relocate”); Barajas-Romeros, 846 F.3d at 364 (noting that the State Department country report did not “identify a safe place for individuals who have become targets of drug cartels and the police”). 22 XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR Moreover, contrary to the IJ’s and BIA’s findings, extensive record evidence shows that Los Zetas operate in many parts of Mexico, including states far away from “Veracruz and surrounding areas.” The 2016 State Department Report and other articles in the record cite torture, kidnappings, and murders by Los Zetas in numerous states throughout Mexico. Petitioner testified that Luna’s family is in Baja California and that these family members include prominent Zetas members. 9 We recognized in Madrigal that Los Zetas had beheaded Petitioner’s fellow soldiers in Jalisco who were involved in arresting Zetas members, then tracked down Petitioner to a remote village in which he was hiding. 716 F.3d at 502. Neither the IJ nor the BIA cited any evidence that there are states in Mexico where Los Zetas are unable to operate. Even if Los Zetas did not find her, Petitioner is at heightened risk throughout Mexico on account of her sexual orientation. Extensive record evidence demonstrates that LGBTQ individuals are at risk throughout Mexico. See also Bringas-Rodriguez, 850 F.3d at 1072 (Mexico has actually experienced “an increase in violence against gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals during the years in which greater legal protections have been extended to these communities.”) (quoting Avendano-Hernadez, 800 F.3d at 1081). We have rejected reasoning such as the IJ employed here, that an applicant can be deemed able to safely relocate based on hiding her fundamental identity. See, e.g., Edu v. Holder, 624 F.3d 1137, 1146 (9th Cir. 2010) (rejecting BIA’s conception that CAT protection requires 9 Neither the IJ nor the BIA provided a cogent reason for concluding that Petitioner’s testimony regarding Luna’s Zetas connections was merely “speculative,” especially considering that she was in a relationship with Luna for nearly a decade. XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 23 alien to give up practice of political beliefs in order to avoid torture); Hernandez-Montiel v. INS, 225 F.3d 1084, 1093 (9th Cir. 2000) (recognizing that sexual orientation is “so fundamental to one’s identity that a person should not be required to abandon” it), overruled on other grounds by Thomas v. Gonzales, 409 F.3d 1177 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc), vacated by 547 U.S. 183 (2006). Although in some circumstances the generalized risk due to Petitioner’s LGBTQ identity may not meet the more-likely-than-not standard on its own, it weighs against a conclusion that there is “evidence that the applicant could relocate to a part of the country of removal where he or she is not likely to be tortured.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(3)(ii). Moreover, “CAT claims must be considered in terms of the aggregate risk of torture from all sources.” Quijada-Aguilar, 799 F.3d at 1308. In summary, we conclude that the lack of affirmative evidence that there is a general or specific area within Mexico where Petitioner can safely relocate, the evidence that Los Zetas operate throughout much of Mexico, and the evidence that LGBTQ individuals are at heightened risk throughout Mexico, together compel a conclusion contrary to the BIA’s. Although not determinative on its own, see Maldonado, 786 F.3d at 1164, the evidence relating to the possibility of relocation weighs in favor of granting Petitioner relief.
The ultimate inquiry in evaluating whether an applicant is entitled to CAT relief is whether, upon consideration of all relevant evidence relevant, the applicant has met her burden to establish that it is more likely than not that she will suffer future torture if removed to the proposed country of removal. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c)(2)–(3). 24 XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR “‘[P]ast torture is ordinarily the principal factor on which we rely when an applicant who has been previously tortured seeks relief under the Convention’ because, absent changed circumstances, ‘if an individual has been tortured and has escaped to another country, it is likely that [s]he will be tortured again if returned to the site of h[er] prior suffering.’” Avendano-Hernandez, 800 F.3d at 1080 (quoting Nuru v. Gonzales, 404 F.3d 1207, 1217 (9th Cir. 2005)). The rapes Petitioner suffered as a child and teenager, and her parents’ reactions to those rapes (either telling Petitioner she deserved it, not believing her, or ejecting her from the house), demonstrate some likelihood that Petitioner is at risk of future torture, particularly in the form of sexual abuse, based on her gender and sexual orientation. See AvendanoHernandez, 800 F.3d at 1079; cf. Bringas-Rodriguez, 850 F.3d at 1076 n.18 (recognizing that a presumption of future harm arises where harm can be expected on account of the same reason, such as sexual orientation). Likewise, the 2005 beating and death threat Petitioner suffered from a prominent Zetas member and cousin of Luna’s demonstrates some likelihood that she would again suffer severe assault or indeed, as she has now left Luna, death, if that cousin or his Zetas associates were to find her in Mexico. Furthermore, Petitioner’s credible testimony that the conditions in Mexico remain the same compels the conclusion that it is more likely than not that Los Zetas will target Petitioner for murder or other torture if she is removed to Mexico. Petitioner testified that she received death threats from Luna’s Zetas relatives and was subject to repeated intimidation tactics for reporting the rape of her daughter and then for reporting the threats themselves. Petitioner testified that the individuals threatening her include Chavelo, Luna’s nephew who tried to sexually assault Petitioner in 2004, who is currently living in Mexico after being deported and XOCHIHUA-JAIMES V. BARR 25 working with Luna’s uncles and cousins in Mexico. Petitioner also testified that Los Zetas tried to kidnap her siblings who are still in Veracruz. As discussed above, the record also includes extensive evidence that LGBTQ individuals are subject to a heightened risk of torture throughout Mexico. Considering all relevant evidence, we conclude that the record compels the conclusion that petitioner has met her burden of proof to establish that it is more likely than not that she will suffer future torture if removed to her native country.