Court Opinion

ID: 9496812
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:35:45.55891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:48.576411
License: Public Domain

LAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Unlike the majority, I feel no obligation to uphold the agency’s decision, which essentially provides that politically motivated death threats to the Petitioner and her family, followed by the consequent murder of three of the Petitioner’s family members and Petitioner’s own brutal gang rape, is not “persecution” within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). Because I believe that Ms. Menendez-Donis’s testimo*920ny compels the conclusion that she suffered past persecution on the basis of her imputed political beliefs, I respectfully dissent.
At her hearing, Menendez-Donis described a pattern of violence resulting from her and her family’s refusal to succumb to guerilla demands.1 Menendez-Donis’s husband, Abel Rame Escobar-So-lares, and her husband’s uncle, Fernando Vasquez Escobar, were partners in a cattle business in a small town outside Chiquimu-lilla, Guatemala. Sometime before 1992, Solares and Escobar were approached by members of Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (“FAR”), a Guatemalan guerilla group, and asked to participate in, and financially support, the organization. Solares, Escobar, and their families (collectively “the family”) refused to support the FAR guerillas. The FAR guerillas interpreted this refusal as evidence that they supported the Guatemalan government. Thereafter, FAR repeatedly threatened to kill the men if they would not support FAR. The men did not give in to the guerillas’ demands.
On December 10, 1992, Menendez-Don-is’s husband, Solares, was murdered while he lay sleeping in his hammock outside his home. For two years after Solares’ death, Escobar and the family continued to receive repeated threats from FAR to the effect that they would be killed if they did not support the guerillas. Escobar did not give in to FAR’s demands. In October of 1994, Escobar was murdered.
About three months after the death of her husband, Menendez-Donis personally received a note, signed by FAR, threatening to kill her if she refused to give the guerillas financial support. After the death of Escobar, she inherited the cattle farm and was therefore a primary target for the FAR guerillas, who wanted money. Over the next few years Menendez-Donis continued to receive threats from FAR, communicated to her through others in the community, that she and her family would be killed if she refused to give FAR support. Menendez-Donis did not give in to the guerillas’ demands.
Consequently, on April 20, 1997, Menendez-Donis was beaten and serially raped by three individuals who came into her home, vowing to kill her. Because the attackers were wearing masks, Menendez-Donis could not visually identify them, but she thought she recognized the voice of one of her attackers as an individual that her husband had previously warned her was a FAR guerilla.
Menendez-Donis survived the attack, and with the help of her brother she fled to Guatemala City where she received medical treatment. Believing she would be killed by FAR if she remained in Guatemala, she sought asylum in the United States. Even while in this country, the threats and violence against her family by FAR guerillas have continued. A year after she fled Guatemala, her children received another written death threat. Her son was later beaten to death.
I do not believe this evidence supports the IJ’s conclusion that her rape was an “incident of common crime.” To the contrary, I believe that any reasonable fact-finder would agree that the attack on Menendez-Donis was consistent with the pattern of violence against her and her family for failing to comply with the demands of FAR guerillas, who viewed them as government loyalists.
The BIA has previously cautioned against holding petitioners to an impossible standard of proof:
*921Persecutors may have differing motives for engaging in acts of persecution, some tied to reasons protected under the Act and others not. Proving the actual, exact reason for persecution or feared persecution may be impossible in many cases. An asylum applicant is not obliged to show conclusively why persecution has occurred or may occur.
... Rather, an asylum applicant bears the burden of establishing facts on which a reasonable person would fear that the danger arises on account of his ... political opinion.
In re S-P, 21 I & N Dec. 486, 489-90 (1996) (quotations and citations omitted). While Menendez-Donis may not have been able to conclusively prove that she was raped as retaliation for failing to comply with the guerillas’ demands, I believe this is the only inference a reasonable fact-finder could draw from her testimony.
Once this political motive is established, there are no other obstacles to Menendez-Donis’s asylum eligibility. If politically motivated, there is no question that the threats and violence described above constitute past persecution. See Del Carmen Molina v. INS, 170 F.3d 1247, 1249 (9th Cir.1999) (holding that “Molina’s actual, uncontradicted, and credible testimony [of the murder of her cousin and subsequent threats of violence against her family] evidence[d] past persecution”); Garrovillas v. INS, 156 F.3d 1010, 1016 (9th Cir.1998) (holding that the receipt of three death threat notes in three months as a result of the petitioner’s affiliation with a political group constituted past persecution); Sangha v. INS, 103 F.3d 1482, 1487 (9th Cir.1997) (finding past persecution where a terrorist group wanted to recruit petitioner and threatened him with death); Lopez-Galarza v. INS, 99 F.3d 954, 959 (9th Cir.1996) (holding that rape on account of an imputed political opinion constitutes past persecution).
Furthermore, I have no hesitation in concluding that this past persecution was sufficiently severe and atrocious to qualify Menendez-Donis for humanitarian asylum, see Francois v. INS, 283 F.3d 926, 931 (8th Cir.2002), which is available regardless of the likelihood of future persecution. See Belayneh v. INS, 213 F.3d 488, 491 (9th Cir.2000) (“[R]ape may constitute an atrocious form of persecution.”); see also Lai v. INS, 255 F.3d 998, 1008 (9th Cir.2001) (same); Lopez-Galarza, 99 F.3d at 962-63 (same).
For these reasons, I believe the BIA’s decision is not supported by substantial evidence and Menendez-Donis should be found eligible for asylum.

. Menendez-Donis was found credible by the IJ, and her testimony must therefore be accepted as undisputed fact. See, e.g., Yazitchian v. INS, 207 F.3d 1164, 1168 (9th Cir.2000).