Court Opinion

ID: 9381502
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-23 00:00:40.900288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:32.944991
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-60248         Document: 00516685911             Page: 1      Date Filed: 03/22/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit                                       United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                        Fifth Circuit
                                      ____________
                                                                                      FILED
                                                                                 March 22, 2023
                                       No. 22-60248
                                     Summary Calendar                            Lyle W. Cayce
                                     ____________                                     Clerk

   Maria Aura Palencia-Ascencio De Ortiz; Hugo Jeferson
   Ortiz-Palencia; Marlen Karina Ortiz-Palencia,

                                                                                Petitioners,

                                             versus

   Merrick Garland, U.S. Attorney General,

                                                                               Respondent.
                      ______________________________

                         Petition for Review of an Order of the
                             Board of Immigration Appeals
                                Agency No. A213 119 743
                               Agency No. A213 119 744
                                Agency No. A213 119 745
                      ______________________________

   Before Higginbotham, Graves, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
          Maria Aura Palencia-Ascencio De Ortiz and two of her minor
   children, Hugo Jeferson Ortiz-Palencia and Marlen Karina Ortiz-Palencia, all
   natives and citizens of Guatemala, petition for review of the dismissal by the

          _____________________
          *
              This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-60248       Document: 00516685911         Page: 2    Date Filed: 03/22/2023

                                    No. 22-60248

   Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) of their appeal from the denial by the
   immigration judge (IJ) of their applications for asylum, withholding of
   removal (WOR), and protection under the Convention Against Torture
   (CAT).
            The petitioners challenge the agency’s denial of asylum and WOR
   based on its finding that there was not a nexus between the petitioners’
   suffered and feared persecution and their family-based proposed particular
   social groups. We lack jurisdiction to consider the unexhausted contention
   that the BIA erred by reviewing the IJ’s lack-of-nexus finding under the clear
   error standard of review. See Avelar-Oliva v. Barr, 954 F.3d 757, 766 (5th Cir.
   2020). Because this assertion raises a completely new ground for relief
   arising solely as a consequence of the BIA’s alleged error, the petitioners
   were required to, but did not, exhaust the issue in a motion to reconsider filed
   with the BIA. See Martinez-Guevara v. Garland, 27 F.4th 353, 360 (5th Cir.
   2022).
            There is no merit to the petitioners’ substantive challenge to the
   agency’s determination that the required nexus was absent because the gang
   targeted them with criminal intent and their family relationship to an extorted
   person was not a central reason for the persecution. See Vazquez-Guerra v.
   Garland, 7 F.4th 265, 270 (5th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 1228 (2022)
   (stating that “[t]hreats or attacks motivated by criminal intentions do not
   provide a basis for protection”); Gonzales-Veliz v. Barr, 938 F.3d 219, 224
   (5th Cir. 2019) (explaining that, under the nexus requirement for asylum and
   WOR, the statutorily protected ground must be a central reason for the
   persecution and cannot be incidental or subordinate to another reason for
   harm); see also Ramirez-Mejia v. Lynch, 794 F.3d 485, 493 (5th Cir. 2015)
   (finding that persecution was not on account of family membership where
   there was no reason to suppose that the demand for information about the
   applicant’s brother was based on “hatred for [the] family”). The petitioners

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Case: 22-60248      Document: 00516685911          Page: 3   Date Filed: 03/22/2023

                                    No. 22-60248

   have not established that the evidence compels a contrary conclusion. See
   Gonzales-Veliz, 938 F.3d at 224-25.
          Additionally, the petitioners challenge the agency’s denial of CAT
   protection on the grounds that the BIA failed to adequately explain its
   decision, including its standard of review, and failed to consider relevant
   testimony regarding the Guatemalan police response, which purportedly
   showed government acquiescence to torture. Here again, the petitioners are
   asserting new arguments arising solely from the BIA’s alleged errors that
   were not exhausted in a motion to reconsider, and we lack jurisdiction to
   consider them. See Martinez-Guevara, 27 F.4th at 360; Avelar-Oliva, 954
   F.3d at 766.
          To the extent that the petitioners are raising a substantive challenge
   to the agency’s determination that they failed to show that the Guatemalan
   government would acquiescence to their torture, the claim lacks merit. See
   Zhang v. Gonzales, 432 F.3d 339, 345 (5th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation
   marks and citation omitted) (stating that a CAT applicant must show a
   likelihood of torture in the country of removal “by or at the instigation of or
   with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in
   an official capacity”). The petitioners rely on Palencia-Ascencio De Ortiz’s
   testimony that, in response to her complaint about her son being threatened
   at school, the Guatemalan police told her they could not get involved because
   threats happen daily and that, in response to her complaint about threatening
   telephone calls, the police sent a patrol car to drive by her home only once.
   However, as the BIA explained, a government’s inability to curtail gang
   violence or eradicate crime, especially when due to a lack of resources, does
   not satisfy the acquiescence requirement. See Tabora Gutierrez v. Garland,
   12 F.4th 496, 504-05 (5th Cir. 2021). The petitioners have not shown that
   the record compels a contrary conclusion with respect to their CAT claim.
   See Gonzales-Veliz, 938 F.3d at 224; Zhang, 432 F.3d at 344.

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Case: 22-60248    Document: 00516685911        Page: 4   Date Filed: 03/22/2023

                                No. 22-60248

         The petition for review is DISMISSED in part for lack of
   jurisdiction and DENIED in part.

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