Opinion ID: 4135
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Claim Based on Exposure of Police Corruption

Text: The agency concluded that Xu failed to establish a nexus between the threats he received and a protected ground because he could not identify who made the threats and 3 because the threats did not include any reference to his investigation to expose police corruption. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(b)(1); see also Yueqing Zhang v. Gonzales, 426 F.3d 540, 545 (2d Cir. 2005). Xu now argues that the agency’s nexus analysis is flawed because it failed to consider both the motives of his alleged persecutors and that his wife was harassed by Wang Li Jun, the individual who was a target of his investigation. Xu’s arguments are without merit, as the record does not compel the conclusion that Xu objected to police misconduct generally, rather than merely the misconduct of isolated individuals, including Wang Li Jun, or that Xu was persecuted on account of such political opinion, rather than harassed for exposing isolated incidents of corruption. See Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 548 (asking “whether the persecutor was attempting to suppress a challenge to the governing institution, as opposed to a challenge to isolated, aberrational acts of greed or malfeasance”); see also Siewe v. Gonzales, 480 F.3d 160, 168 (2d Cir. 2007) (“[W]here the evidence would support either of competing inferences, the fact that this Court might have drawn one inference does not entitle it to overturn the [agency’s] choice of the other.” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted, first alteration in 4 original)).