Court Opinion

ID: 9963537
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-25 17:02:05.716938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:24:52.138140
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                       UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                       APR 25 2024

                              FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT                     MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                          U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

JESSICA GABRIELA CUEVAS TORRES;                     No. 23-146
GRECIA LINETTE CUEVAS TORRES;
JUAN CARLOS CEUVAS TORRES;                          Agency Nos. A215-816-038
GLORIA FERNANDA CUEVAS TORRES;                                  A215-816-039
NATHAN ANTHUAN CUEVAS TORRES,                                   A215-816-040
                                                                A215-816-041
                   Petitioners,                                 A215-816-042
     v.
                                                    MEMORANDUM*
MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney
General,
                   Respondent.

                        On Petition for Review of an Order of the
                            Board of Immigration Appeals
                              Submitted December 4, 2023**
                                San Francisco, California

Before: COLLINS, FORREST, and SUNG, Circuit Judges.

          Jessica Gabriela Cuevas Torres, a citizen of Mexico, petitions for review of

a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) upholding a decision of

an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denying her applications for asylum, withholding of

removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“Torture

*
 This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as
provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
  The panel unanimously concludes that this case is suitable for decision without
oral argument. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
Convention”).1 We have jurisdiction under § 242 of the Immigration and

Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1252. We review the agency’s legal conclusions de

novo and its factual findings for substantial evidence. See Davila v. Barr, 968 F.3d

1136, 1141 (9th Cir. 2020). Under the latter standard, the “administrative findings

of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to

conclude to the contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B). We deny the petition.

      The IJ rejected Cuevas Torres’s asylum and withholding claims on two

alternative grounds. First, the IJ held that Cuevas Torres’s two proposed social

groups (“women in Mexico subject to abuse and femicide” and “victims of child

sexual abuse”) were not cognizable. Second, the IJ concluded that, even if these

groups were cognizable, Cuevas Torres had “not established a sufficient nexus”

between her asserted past and feared harms and these proposed social groups.

With respect to the latter ground, the IJ relied on the following factual findings in

concluding that Cuevas Torres had failed to show the requisite nexus: (1) Cuevas

Torres’s 2012 kidnap and rape were part of an effort to extort her boyfriend’s

wealthy family and were therefore motivated by greed; (2) the violence she

1
  Cuevas Torres’s four minor children are derivative beneficiaries with respect to
her asylum application only, and they did not file separate applications. We deny
Respondent’s motion to amend the case caption to delete the minor children as co-
petitioners. Although the petition for review filed in this case improperly used “et
al.” in the case caption, it nonetheless sufficiently identified the petitioners “in the
caption or the body of the petition” by correctly listing the agency “A” numbers for
all five petitioners in the caption and by attaching a proof of service that correctly
identified all five petitioners by name and by “A” number. See FED. R. APP. P.
15(a)(2)(A).

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experienced from her husband was due to the fact that he was generally an

“aggressive and violent” person who was indiscriminately violent towards many

other persons, including his father; and (3) threats she received from her landlord

to drop a civil fraud suit were simply part of a private scheme by persons “engaged

in fraud.”

      In her brief to the BIA, Cuevas Torres challenged the IJ’s conclusion that the

two social groups were not cognizable, but beyond a conclusory heading that “the

IJ failed to see that the harm suffered was based on an enumerated ground”

(capitalization omitted), there was no analysis of the IJ’s nexus ruling. In

particular, Cuevas Torres’s brief made no effort whatsoever to rebut the IJ’s

particularized, incident-based findings about the motivations of her various

assailants. The BIA concluded that Cuevas Torres had thereby waived any

objections to the IJ’s nexus determinations and that those unchallenged

determinations were alone sufficient to uphold the denial of asylum and

withholding of removal.

      We have held that a petitioner challenging a BIA decision will “be deemed

to have exhausted only those issues he raised and argued in his brief before the

BIA.” Abebe v. Mukasey, 554 F.3d 1203, 1208 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc). In its

brief in this court, the Government has properly asserted Cuevas Torres’s failure to

exhaust the dispositive nexus issue. Although the INA’s exhaustion requirement,

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see 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1), is not jurisdictional, see Santos-Zacaria v. Garland, 598

U.S. 411, 423 (2023), it is a mandatory rule that we “must enforce” when, as here,

it is “properly raise[d],” Fort Bend County v. Davis, 139 S. Ct. 1843, 1849 (2019)

(citation omitted). Cuevas Torres contends that she did exhaust the argument that

there is an automatic “global nexus” between any harm visited upon members of

these proposed social groups and their membership in these groups, and that the

BIA “failed to apprehend” this argument. We do not discern where in her BIA

brief Cuevas Torres ever made this argument, and it is likewise unexhausted.

Cuevas Torres thus failed to exhaust the issue of nexus in her appeal to the BIA.

Because that issue is, by itself, “dispositive” of her “asylum and withholding of

removal claims,” Riera-Riera v. Lynch, 841 F.3d 1077, 1081 (9th Cir. 2016), we

uphold the agency’s denial of such relief on that ground, without reaching any of

Cuevas Torres’s other arguments concerning such relief.

      Finally, Cuevas Torres’s opening brief does not challenge the agency’s

denial of her request for relief under the Torture Convention. We therefore deem

that issue to be forfeited. See Lopez-Vasquez v. Holder, 706 F.3d 1072, 1079–80

(9th Cir. 2013) (issues not specifically raised and argued in a party’s opening brief

are waived).2

      PETITION DENIED.

2
 We deny as moot Petitioners’ motion for stay of removal and Respondent’s
motion to extend the time to respond to that motion.

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