FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
OCT 9 2020
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
EDNA GRISELDA GARCIA No. 18-72255
PORTILLO; JORGE LUIS SORIA
GARCIA; JOSE FRANCISCO SORIA Agency Nos. A208-311-721
GARCIA; MARLENE ZITLALI SORIA A208-311-744
GARCIA, A208-311-749
A208-311-750
Petitioners,
v. MEMORANDUM*
WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General,
Respondent.
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Submitted October 5, 2020**
Seattle, Washington
Before: GRABER and W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judges, and FREUDENTHAL,***
District Judge.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
***
The Honorable Nancy D. Freudenthal, United States District Judge for
the District of Wyoming, sitting by designation.
Edna Garcia Portillo petitions for review of a decision by the Board of
Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) holding that she is ineligible for asylum,
withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture
(“CAT”).1 We deny the petition.
During removal proceedings, Garcia Portillo argued that she had faced
persecution in her home state of Michoacán, Mexico. A relative sexually abused
her as a child. While working for a federal agency, she was robbed by armed
members of a drug cartel. On another occasion, she encountered members of a
cartel trying to burn down city hall. In early 2015, after her brother Julio Cesar
joined a cartel, several men came to her father and demanded to know his location
or they would “take the entire family and chop them up.” When Jose Luis, another
of her brothers, left a cartel in October 2016, he was shot in the head. On a
Facebook page that announced his murder, someone commented that “the only
ones left to kill are [Jose Luis’] siblings.”
We review the agency’s legal conclusions de novo and its factual findings
for substantial evidence. Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051, 1059 (9th
Cir. 2017) (en banc). A finding is supported by substantial evidence unless “‘any
1
This memorandum refers to Garcia Portillo because she is lead petitioner,
but her three children are derivative beneficiaries.
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reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary’ based on
the evidence in the record.” Id. (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B)).
Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination that Garcia Portillo
failed to prove a nexus between harm and a protected ground. See 8 U.S.C.
§ 1158(b)(1)(B)(i) (providing that, to be eligible for asylum, “the applicant must
establish that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or
political opinion was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the
applicant”). The BIA permissibly concluded that Garcia Portillo’s abuse as a child,
her encounters with robbers and arsonists, and the threats related to her brothers
lack any connection to political opinion, a particular social group, or any other
protected ground.
Garcia Portillo’s abuse as a child and encounters with criminals as an adult
resulted from a general criminal enterprise and not from her political opinion or
membership in a protected group. Zetino v. Holder, 622 F.3d 1007, 1016 (9th Cir.
2010). The persons who threatened Garcia Portillo’s father sought to intimidate
him into revealing Julio Cesar’s location because they believed that he knew that
information; he was not threatened because of family membership. And the BIA
permissibly disregarded the Facebook comment by an unknown person as
insufficient to give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution. See Mendez-
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Gutierrez v. Gonzales, 444 F.3d 1168, 1172 (9th Cir. 2006) (stating that a
petitioner’s “vague . . . allegations of fear for [her] life” are insufficient to support
such a finding).
We need not decide whether the BIA erred by failing to address expressly
Garcia Portillo’s claim for withholding of removal under the proper legal standard.
See Barajas-Romero v. Lynch, 846 F.3d 351, 356–60 (9th Cir. 2017) (holding that
the legal standard for proving nexus for withholding of removal is less stringent
than that for proving nexus for asylum). Even assuming that the BIA erred, any
error was harmless because substantial evidence supports the conclusion that there
was no nexus between the harm and a protected ground. See Singh v. Barr, 935
F.3d 822, 827 (9th Cir. 2019) (per curiam) (declining to remand in these
circumstances because it “would be an idle and useless formality” (internal
quotation marks omitted)).
Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s conclusions that it is not likely that
Garcia Portillo will be tortured in Mexico with the acquiescence of a public
official, and that she is therefore ineligible for relief under CAT.
PETITION DENIED.
4