Court Opinion

ID: 9449303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:01:09.902078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:58.451044
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                       FILED
                      UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                       AUG 4 2023

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

ALONDRA CECILIA PATRICIA                         No. 21-70368
MONTERO-ALVIZURES,
                                                 Agency No. A201-921-556
                  Petitioner,
    v.
                                                 MEMORANDUM*
MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney
General,
                  Respondent.

                       On Petition for Review of an Order of the
                           Board of Immigration Appeals
                         Argued and Submitted March 8, 2023
                                Pasadena, California

Before: KLEINFELD and COLLINS, Circuit Judges.**

         Alondra Cecilia Patricia Montero-Alvizures, a citizen of Guatemala,

petitions for review of the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”)

upholding the order of the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denying her applications for

asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against

Torture (“Torture Convention”). We have jurisdiction under § 242 of the

*
  This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as
provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
   This matter is decided unanimously by a quorum of the panel. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 46(d); Ninth Cir. Gen. Order 3.2(h).
Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and § 2242(d) of the

Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1231 note. See

Nasrallah v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1683, 1690–91 (2020). We review the agency’s legal

conclusions de novo and its factual findings for substantial evidence. See Bringas-

Rodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051, 1059 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc). Under the

substantial evidence 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.

      1. Substantial evidence supports the agency’s denial of Montero-Alvizures’s

claims for asylum and withholding of removal.

      In this court, Montero-Alvizures argues that she suffered past persecution on

account of her anti-corruption and anti-organized-crime political opinions and

related political activities. While she made these claims to the IJ, she failed to

raise them anywhere in her brief to the BIA. Because Montero-Alvizures has not

exhausted before the BIA the claims that she raised in her opening brief in this

court, the BIA did not address them. The Government has properly invoked

Montero-Alvizures’s failure to exhaust, and so we decline to consider those claims.

See Bare v. Barr, 975 F.3d 952, 960–961 (9th Cir. 2020) (explaining that

exhaustion requires claims “to have first been raised in the administrative

proceedings below and to have been sufficient to put the BIA on notice of what

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was being challenged,” which requires more than “a general challenge to the IJ’s

decision” (citations omitted)); cf. Santos-Zacarias v. Garland, 598 U.S. 411, 416–

23 (2023) (holding that the INA’s exhaustion requirement is not jurisdictional and

may be waived or forfeited if not asserted by the Government).

      Before the BIA, Montero-Alvizures argued that she had been persecuted on

account of her anti-abortion political opinion and her proposed particular social

group of Guatemalan women who are viewed as property by their male partners.

But in her opening brief to this court, Montero-Alvizures failed to challenge the

BIA’s determination that any harms she suffered in Guatemala were not on

account of her anti-abortion political opinion or her membership in this particular

social group. As such, she has forfeited this claim. See Lopez-Vasquez v. Holder,

706 F.3d 1072, 1079–80 (9th Cir. 2013).

      Even reviewing those grounds for persecution that were exhausted before

the BIA, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the BIA’s lack of nexus

finding. The BIA found that there was no clear error in the IJ’s determination that

the harms Montero-Alvizures suffered were on account of a personal dispute with

her ex-partner over their relationship and custody of their child, which cannot serve

as grounds for asylum. See Garcia v. Wilkinson, 988 F.3d 1136, 1144–45 (9th Cir.

2021) (“[P]urely personal retribution is not persecution on account of a protected

ground.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The BIA further concluded that

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there was no evidence that established a “persecutory” motive for the harms

Montero-Alvizures suffered, and consequently, she had failed to establish a nexus

between her political opinion or particular social group and the harms she suffered.

Nothing in the record compels a contrary conclusion.

      2. Substantial evidence also supports the agency’s denial of relief under the

Torture Convention. Montero-Alvizures failed to establish “that she will more

likely than not be tortured with the consent or acquiescence of a public official if

removed to her native country,” Xochihua-Jaimes v. Barr, 962 F.3d 1175, 1183

(9th Cir. 2020), and the BIA found no clear error in the IJ’s decision that she did

not meet that standard. In its analysis of her Torture Convention claim, the BIA

did err in stating that Montero-Alvizures “was not physically harmed in

Guatemala,” when in fact Montero-Alvizures had testified that she had been beaten

by her ex-partner. But Montero-Alvizures failed to raise this error in her opening

brief in this court, and so she has forfeited the issue. See United States v. Perez,

116 F.3d 840, 845 (9th Cir. 1997). Even if the issue were not forfeited, there is no

error warranting remand. In denying relief under the Torture Convention, the BIA

provided alternative and independent reasons for affirming the IJ’s decision, which

had not made any such mistake. Specifically, the BIA upheld the IJ’s conclusion

that Montero-Alvizures had failed “to establish that anyone in Guatemala is even

looking for [Montero-Alvizures], much less, desiring to torture her” or that the

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Guatemalan government would acquiesce in any such torture. The BIA’s error

regarding Montero-Alvizures’s past harm by her ex-partner does not vitiate this

finding concerning her failure to show a likelihood of future torture in which the

Guatemalan government would acquiesce. The agency permissibly concluded, on

this record, that Montero-Alvizures had failed to show such a likelihood.

      PETITION DENIED.

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