Court Opinion

ID: 9839387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-12 23:00:26.265168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:15.684774
License: Public Domain

21-6084
     Coto Zelaya v. Garland
                                                                                   BIA
                                                                           Vomacka, IJ
                                                                       A206 072 061/062

                              UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                  FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                     SUMMARY ORDER

RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT.
CITATION TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS
PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE
32.1 AND THIS COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER
IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE
FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION
“SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A
COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

 1         At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
 2   Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley
 3   Square, in the City of New York, on the 12th day of September, two thousand
 4   twenty-three.
 5
 6   PRESENT:
 7              DENNIS JACOBS,
 8              GUIDO CALABRESI,
 9              RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR.,
10                    Circuit Judges.
11   _________________________________________
12
13   MICHELLE AUXILIADORA COTO ZELAYA,
14   FREDY DANILO AGUSTIN MORENO,
15                Petitioners,
16
17                    v.                                        21-6084
18                                                              NAC
19   MERRICK B. GARLAND, UNITED
 1   STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL,
 2                    Respondent.
 3   _________________________________________
 4
 5   FOR PETITIONERS:                  Faith E. Gay; Ester Murdukhayeva,
 6                                     Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC,
 7                                     New York, NY.
 8
 9   FOR RESPONDENT:                   Brian Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney
10                                     General; Keith I. McManus, Assistant
11                                     Director; Nelle M. Seymour, Trial Attorney,
12                                     Office of Immigration Litigation, United
13                                     States Department of Justice, Washington,
14                                     DC.
15
16         UPON DUE CONSIDERATION of this petition for review of a Board of

17   Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision, it is hereby ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND

18   DECREED that the petition for review is DENIED.

19         Petitioners Michelle Auxiliadora Coto Zelaya, a native and citizen of

20   Honduras, and Fredy Danilo Agustin Moreno, a native and citizen of Guatemala,

21   seek review of a January 19, 2021 decision of the BIA affirming a July 18, 2018

22   decision of an Immigration Judge (“IJ”), which denied Coto Zelaya’s claims for

23   asylum and withholding of removal and determined that she had waived her

24   claim for relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). * In re Michelle

     *This order refers primarily to Coto Zelaya, as her husband Agustin Moreno was a
     derivative beneficiary of her asylum claim.
                                            2
 1   Auxiliadora Coto Zelaya, Fredy Danilo Agustin Moreno, Nos. A206 072 061/062 (B.I.A.

 2   Jan. 19, 2021), aff’g Nos. A206 072 061/062 (Immig. Ct. N.Y. City July 18, 2018). We

 3   assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts and procedural history.

 4         Under the circumstances, we have reviewed the IJ’s decision as modified by

 5   the BIA. See Xue Hong Yang v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 426 F.3d 520, 522 (2d Cir. 2005).

 6   We review factual findings for substantial evidence and questions of law and

 7   application of law to fact de novo. See Yanqin Weng v. Holder, 562 F.3d 510, 513

 8   (2d Cir. 2009). “[T]he administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any

9    reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.”

10   8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B).

11         To establish eligibility for asylum and withholding of removal, an applicant

12   must establish past persecution or a well-founded fear or likelihood of persecution

13   “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group,

14   or political opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42); see also 8 U.S.C. §§ 1158(b)(1)(B)(i),

15   1231(b)(3)(A); 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.13(b), 1208.16(b).        The agency reasonably

16   concluded that Coto Zelaya failed to establish that she suffered past persecution

17   because she did not allege that she was harmed when gang members shot at her

18   car. See Mei Fun Wong v. Holder, 633 F.3d 64, 72 (2d Cir. 2011) (“[P]ersecution is

                                              3
 1   an extreme concept that does not include every sort of treatment our society

 2   regards as offensive.” (quotation marks omitted)).        Contrary to Coto Zelaya’s

 3   contention, the agency was not required to consider the harm her siblings suffered

 4   after she left Honduras in evaluating whether she had suffered past persecution.

 5   See Shi Liang Lin v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 494 F.3d 296, 308 (2d Cir. 2007) (holding that

 6   “applicants can become candidates for asylum relief only based on persecution

 7   that they themselves have suffered”); Tao Jiang v. Gonzales, 500 F.3d 137, 141–42

 8   (2d Cir. 2007) (noting that harm to an applicant’s family member might amount to

 9   past persecution if the applicant was in the “zone of risk” and suffered some harm

10   following the incident or the harm was a means of targeting the applicant).

11   Because Coto Zelaya did not demonstrate past persecution, she was not entitled

12   to a presumption of a well-founded fear or likelihood of persecution and thus had

13   the burden to establish that she had such a fear on account of a protected ground.

14   See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.13(b), 1208.16(b).

15         Coto Zelaya did not meet that burden.            She proposed social groups

16   consisting of business owners and her family. “To succeed on a particular social

17   group claim, the applicant must establish both that the group itself was cognizable,

18   and that the alleged persecutors targeted [or would target] the applicant on

                                                4
 1   account of her membership in that group.” Paloka v. Holder, 762 F.3d 191, 195 (2d

 2   Cir. 2014) (quotation marks and citations omitted). “In cases where there is more

 3   than one motive for mistreatment (also known as mixed-motive cases), . . . an

 4   applicant’s status as a member of a particular social group . . . must be at least one

 5   of the central reasons, rather than a minor reason, for why that individual is being

 6   targeted.” Garcia-Aranda v. Garland, 53 F.4th 752, 757 (2d Cir. 2022). “[T]he fact

 7   that a persecutor has threatened an applicant and members of his [or her] family

 8   does not necessarily mean that the threats were motivated by family ties.” Id.

 9   (quotation marks omitted). “Instead, because membership in the family cannot

10   be a minor, incidental, or tangential reason for the harm, the fact that a persecutor

11   targets a family member simply as a means to an end is not, by itself, sufficient to

12   establish a claim, especially if the end is not connected to another protected

13   ground.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).

14         The agency reasonably concluded that, even assuming Coto Zelaya’s social

15   group was cognizable, she failed to establish a nexus between the harm she fears

16   and her membership in her proposed social groups because her testimony

17   demonstrated that the gang targeted her and her family for financial reasons based

18   solely on their interest in obtaining wealth rather than for any “animus toward”

                                               5
 1   business owners or her family.       Id. at 758 (agreeing that applicant failed to

 2   establish a nexus between harm she and her family suffered and her family

 3   membership where a gang targeted her business-owning family based on the

 4   family’s perceived wealth rather than animus against the family); see also Ucelo-

 5   Gomez v. Mukasey, 509 F.3d 70, 73 (2d Cir. 2007) (“When the harm visited upon

 6   members of a group is attributable to the incentives presented to ordinary

 7   criminals rather than to persecution, the scales are tipped away from considering

 8   those people a ‘particular social group’ within the meaning of the [Immigration

 9   and Nationality Act].”).

10         Although a CAT claim does not require a nexus to a protected ground, the

11   BIA did not err in concluding that Coto Zelaya waived her CAT claim because she

12   did not argue it in her brief to the BIA. See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c), 1208.17(a);

13   Yueqing Zhang v. Gonzales, 426 F.3d 540, 541 n.1, 545 n.7 (2d Cir. 2005) (noting that

14   petitioner abandons issues and claims not raised in his brief). Because she did

15   not raise her CAT claim to the BIA, it is not properly before us. See Quituizaca v.

16   Garland, 52 F.4th 103, 116 (2d Cir. 2022) (“We require the petitioner to raise issues

17   to the BIA in order to preserve them for judicial review.” (quotation marks and

18   brackets omitted)).

                                              6
1        For the foregoing reasons, the petition for review is DENIED. All pending

2   motions and applications are DENIED and stays VACATED.

3                                      FOR THE COURT:
4                                      Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe,
5                                      Clerk of Court

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