Court Opinion

ID: 9473156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:21:13.961107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:21.575577
License: Public Domain

*1541FERGUSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority opinion carefully restates the law as it applies to appeals from the Board of Immigration Appeals denying requests for political asylum and withholding of deportation. Yet when it comes time to apply the facts of the case to the carefully documented rules of law, the majority fails to discharge the constitutional duty that it outlines.
I agree with the majority’s statement of the law. An alien cannot be deported if he shows a clear probability that if he is returned to his country he will be persecuted to the extent that his life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. 8 U.S.C. § 1253(h).
When it attempts to apply the law to this case, however, the majority builds a syllogism whose implicit but unstated major premise contradicts the law that had just been so carefully presented, and whose minor premise lacks any basis in fact. Thus, the conclusion reached by the majority is necessarily invalid. The majority reasons: (1) section 243(h) mandates that deportation be withheld only if the deportee faces threats of severe deprivation of freedom; (2) Espinoza-Martinez faces confinement to quarters and, in “today’s Nicaragua, confinement to quarters appears to be a mild punishment for any type of political dissension, especially dissension by military personnel”; (3) therefore, he is not entitled to the protection of section 243(h).
The major premise misstates the law. Section 243(h) does not state that the threat to freedom must be severe. The words are “freedom would be threatened.”
The minor premise combines a new “fact” that arises from pure conjecture with a personal opinion about the relative severity of the threat to “life or freedom” that Espinoza-Martinez faces. Such personal opinions and conjecture have no place in the judicial decisionmaking process. The conclusion, therefore, is contrary to the congressional mandate.
I therefore dissent. To hold that freedom is relative in Nicaragua is to violate the court’s constitutional duty. The petitioner’s freedom was taken away once and there is a clear probability that it will be taken away again if he is deported.