Opinion ID: 1354339
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The need to adduce individualized evidence

Text: Even under the disfavored group approach, an applicant for withholding of removal must show that his chance of future persecution is greater than fifty percent. Evidence of group discrimination will go part of the way toward meeting that bar how far depending upon how egregious and pervasive the showing of group discrimination is, see Mgoian, 184 F.3d at 1035 n. 4but, absent a pattern or practice of persecution, it can never go all the way. As we explained recently in the asylum context in Lolong v. Gonzales, 484 F.3d 1173, 1179, 1181 n. 6 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc), some evidence of individualized risk is necessary for the petitioner to succeed. In Lolong, we upheld the BIA's determination that an asylum applicant belonging to Indonesia's Chinese Christian minority failed to show an objectively well-founded fear of future persecution, because she had offered no evidence of her own individual risk. Id. at 1181 n. 6. Rather, Lolong rested her claim solely on evidence that Chinese Indonesian women as a group are targeted for violent attacks and rapes, and on evidence that family members and a friend had experienced anti-Chinese violence. We held that a general, undifferentiated claim based solely on the threat to the group as a whole is not sufficient for an individual petitioner to establish the requisite likelihood of persecution under the singled out individually rubric. Id. at 1179. Asylum applicants who attempt to show their eligibility for asylum in part by relying on their membership in a disfavored group must prove something more than their status as ... members of that group. Id. at 1181 n. 6. Similarly, in Sael, we emphasized that the petitioner's showing that she is a member of a disfavored group must be coupled with a showing that she, in particular, is likely to be targeted as a member of that group. Sael, 386 F.3d at 925. Sael met this burden by adducing evidence that she personally had been threatened, her home vandalized, and her car thronged by a mob who saw that she was Chinese. Id. at 927-28. An applicant for withholding of removal will need to adduce a considerably larger quantum of individualized-risk evidence to prevail than would an asylum applicant like Sael, assuming their disfavored group evidence is of equal severity and pervasiveness, because the ultimate bar for withholding is higher than the bar for asylum. As a practical matter, then, applying disfavored group analysis to withholding claims will not affect the outcome of most petitioners' cases. Most aliens seek both forms of relief as a matter of course. [11] If an applicant fails to demonstrate eligibility for asylum even with the help of disfavored group analysis (such that his chance of future persecution, even with the evidentiary boost that his membership in a disfavored group provides, is less than ten percent), then he will necessarily have failed to demonstrate eligibility for withholding of removal. See Mansour v. Ashcroft, 390 F.3d 667, 673 (9th Cir. 2004). There are cases, however, in which the applicant's request for asylum fails not for lack of proof on the merits, but because his application is found to be time-barredas Wakkary's was initially, although we have remanded that decision. In such cases, the fact of the applicant's membership in a group proven to be disfavored could mean the difference between meeting withholding's more likely than not bar and coming up short. Given the high burden of proof for withholding, it is likely that evidence of group persecution not sufficiently widespread to amount to a pattern or practice will relatively infrequently succeed in filling the gap between individually-specific risk evidence and the requisite level of proof. But infrequently is not never. We hold that the BIA erred in precluding consideration of disfavored group evidence entirely with regard to withholding of removal.