Court Opinion

ID: 9493732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:17:16.413505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:00.030413
License: Public Domain

BETTY B. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. While I acknowledge that this is a close case, I believe that Molina-Morales has alleged facts that are sufficiently compelling to support a claim of persecution on account of imputed political opinion and to require a remand back to the BIA for a credibility determination.
As an initial matter, not mentioned in the majority’s recital of the facts is the fact that after being severely beaten, Molina-Morales was also thrown unconscious into a river and presumably left for dead by his armed attackers. It was only after these attackers had departed that a nearby farmer felt it was safe enough to come over, “saw that [Molina-Morales] was still breathing,” and then rescued him. The only reasonable inference to be drawn from this account is that the attack by Salazar’s henchmen constituted nothing short of attempted murder.
Most important, I find incredible the majority’s (and the BIA majority’s) characterization of these attacks as “[not] in any way motivated by [Molina-Morales]’s political opinion or an opinion [his attackers] imputed to him.” To be accused of rape clearly imperiled Salazar’s impending mayoral candidacy, as well as his status as local ARENA leader. Most likely, some combination of both personal and political motivations played a role in Salazar’s actions in the aftermath of the alleged rape. As we stated in Navas v. INS, 217 F.3d 646, 658 (9th Cir.2000), “this court has made clear [that] the statute covers persecution on account of political opinion even where the persecutor acts out of mixed motives. Put another way, the protected ground need only constitute a motive for the persecution in question; it need not be the sole motive.” See also Borja v. INS, 175 F.3d 732, 734 (9th Cir.1999) (en banc) (“the plain meaning of the phrase ‘persecution on account of the victim’s political opinion,’ does not mean persecution solely on account of the victim’s political opinion”) (internal quotations omitted). More*1053over, the fact that Salazar was able to enlist the services of the police leads me to conclude that the political component outweighed any personal motivations in the persecution that Molina-Morales underwent.
Indeed, the majority’s conclusion can only be believed if one turns a blind eye to the recent political and socioeconomic history of El Salvador. In 1989, when these incidents took place, El Salvador was engaged in a lengthy, devastating and highly polarizing civil war. In such a divided society, it would be unreasonable to presume that the rape accusation against Salazar would not also be construed as an overtly political act, posing a direct threat to the established political order. Simply put, parties to ordinary, apolitical “personal vendettas” normally do not and cannot enlist the organs of the state to carry out their aims. Thus, to characterize Salazar’s political status as local ARENA leader (and now mayor) as being “merely incidental” to Molina-Morales’s persecution completely misreads the nature of El Salvadoran society at the time of these events, and unreasonably downplays the likelihood that Salazar and his ARENA supporters imputed inimical political views to Molina-Morales.
This case is therefore much closer to Navas, in which we held that an El Salvadoran refugee — whose aunt and uncle had been murdered by the Salvadoran military, whose mother had been beaten and threatened with death, and whose own life had been threatened — qualified for withholding of deportation (and not just for asylum) based on imputed political opinion. To be sure, Navas’s aunt had been married to a member of the leftist guerilla group Frente Farabundo Marti para la Libera-ción Nacional (“FMLN”), and Navas himself was known to have distributed political materials. Navas, 217 F.3d at 660-61. Critically, however, like this case, the outcome in Navas also turned on the claim that the soldiers were motivated not by imputed political opinion, but by a personal vendetta to eliminate a witness to their crimes. The Navas court flatly rejected this argument, stating that “the BIA found that the soldiers’ actions were motivated solely by the desire to avoid prosecution. That conclusion is patently erroneous, as any reasonable factfinder would be compelled to conclude.” Id. at 661; see also Yazitchian v. INS, 207 F.3d 1164 (9th Cir.2000) (rejecting the BIA’s conclusion that the persecution suffered by Armenian petitioners accused of Dashnak party affiliation was personal, and holding that extortion demanded by the government arose in part because of imputed political opinion); Grava v. INS, 205 F.3d 1177, 1181 & n. 3 (9th Cir.2000) (holding that “official retaliation against those who expose and prosecute governmental corruption may ... amount to persecution on account of political opinion,” and noting that while “[p]urely personal retribution” is not cognizable for asylum purposes, “many persecutors have mixed motives”); Vera-Valera v. INS, 147 F.3d 1036 (9th Cir.1998) (finding imputed political opinion because Peruvian guerrillas viewed a cooperative’s president’s support for a building project to be against their political agenda, even though he supported the project for business, rather than political, reasons). Notably, the acts of persecution in Navas also took place in June 1992 — after the signing of the peace accord between the ARENA-dominated El Salvadoran government and the FMLN. By contrast, the persecution suffered by Molina-Morales took place while the civil war was still raging, and when political and social polarization was presumably much higher. Cf. Cordon-Garcia v. INS, 204 F.3d 985, 992 (“Petitioner’s ‘presumed affiliation’ with the Guatemalan government — an entity the guerrillas oppose — is the functional equivalent of a conclusion that she holds a political opinion opposite to that of the guerrillas, whether or not she holds such an opinion.”) (citing Briones v. INS, 175 F.3d 727, 729 (9th Cir.1999) (“[Djeath threats by people on one side of a civil war against a person suspected of being on the other side constitute^] persecution on account of political opinion.”)).
*1054I respectfully dissent because Molina-Morales’s treatment in this case was at least in part on account of imputed political opinion.