Lopez-Lopez v. Sessions , 885 F.3d 49 ( 2018 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 17-1907
RONY LOPEZ-LOPEZ,
Petitioner,
v.
JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III,
ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Respondent.
PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER
OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS
Before
Lynch, Circuit Judge,
Souter, Associate Justice,*
and Kayatta, Circuit Judge.
Kevin P. MacMurray, Daniel W. Chin, and MacMurray & Associates
on brief for petitioner.
David Kim, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation,
Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Chad A. Readler, Acting
Assistant Attorney General, and Kohsei Ugumori, Senior Litigation
Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief for
respondent.
* Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
March 16, 2018
LYNCH, Circuit Judge. We deny Rony Lopez-Lopez's
petition for review because there was substantial evidence before
the IJ and BIA that Lopez-Lopez had failed to meet his burden to
establish a nexus between his alleged persecution and a statutorily
protected ground.
In April 2013, the Department of Homeland Security
served Lopez-Lopez, a native and citizen of Guatemala, with a
notice to appear, charging that he was removable pursuant to
8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) because he had entered the United
States without inspection on an unknown date; Lopez-Lopez later
testified that he had entered in January 2007. Lopez-Lopez filed
an application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection
under the Convention Against Torture ("CAT") in March 2015. The
immigration judge ("IJ") excused the late filing of Lopez-Lopez's
application, and addressed and denied it on its merits.
Lopez-Lopez claimed that his basis for relief was that
drug traffickers had moved into his village in Guatemala in 2006,
taken over his family's land, and used threats of violence to
coerce him and his family members into cultivating raw materials
for drugs on that land. Lopez-Lopez also testified that three of
his siblings remained unharmed in Guatemala because they did what
the drug traffickers asked them to do. He alleged that he had
been persecuted, and that the persecution was because he belonged
to a "particular social group" of "poor, uneducated landowners."
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The IJ denied Lopez-Lopez's application, holding that
his claimed social group was "not a protected ground under the
[Immigration and Nationality Act]" and that, in any case, Lopez-
Lopez had not established a nexus between his alleged persecution,
or fear of future persecution, and any protected ground. The IJ
also held that, even if Lopez-Lopez had established that he had
been targeted on the basis of a protected ground, he had failed to
show government action or inaction necessary to establish past
persecution because "there was no evidence that any Guatemalan
authorities on any level were notified of the situation."1
On appeal, the BIA agreed with the IJ's conclusion that
Lopez-Lopez had not "establish[ed] that any persecution he ha[d]
suffered or fears was or is on account of a protected ground."
The BIA held that, even assuming that Lopez-Lopez had established
a "cognizable particular social group" of "poor, uneducated
landowners in Guatemala," he had "not demonstrated that one central
motive for the harm he suffered or fears was or would be on account
of his membership in such a group." The BIA also stated that
"widespread violence" in Guatemala "d[id] not provide a basis for
a grant of asylum." Because the BIA's nexus holding was an
independently sufficient basis for its decision to dismiss Lopez-
1 The IJ also denied Lopez-Lopez's claim for CAT
protection, and the BIA affirmed. Lopez-Lopez does not challenge
this denial in his petition for review.
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Lopez's appeal, the BIA did not, and was not obligated to, address
the other bases for the IJ's decision, contrary to Lopez-Lopez's
arguments in his petition for review. See INS v. Bagamasbad, 429
U.S. 24, 25 (1976) ("As a general rule courts and agencies are not
required to make findings on issues the decision of which is
unnecessary to the results they reach.").
In his petition for review, Lopez-Lopez argues that he
met his burden of establishing both nexus to a protected ground
and past persecution. We reach only the nexus issue.
We review the IJ's and BIA's nexus determination
"through the prism of the substantial evidence rule," Lopez de
Hincapie v. Gonzales, 494 F.3d 213, 218 (1st Cir. 2007), under
which we uphold the determination unless the record "compel[s] the
contrary conclusion," id. Lopez-Lopez testified that drug
traffickers had "t[aken] advantage" of his family's land because
it was "very productive." He also testified that the drug
traffickers had forced him and his family members to cultivate raw
materials for drugs on that land because his family "had experience
with agriculture and harvest[ing]." Based on this testimony, the
IJ and BIA reasonably concluded that the drug traffickers' alleged
conduct had been centrally motivated by a desire to profit from
the use of Lopez-Lopez's family's land, rather than by an intent
to harm poor, uneducated landowners as a group. See Singh v.
Mukasey, 543 F.3d 1, 6-7 (1st Cir. 2008) (holding that evidence
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that the petitioner had been persecuted "primarily" because of
"economic motivations" supported the BIA's finding that petitioner
had failed to show nexus); Lopez de Hincapie, 494 F.3d at 219(holding that facts indicating that petitioner had been targeted
"because of greed, not because of her political opinion or
membership in a particular social group," supported the BIA's
determination that petitioner had not established nexus). As such,
substantial evidence supported the BIA's and IJ's dispositive
determination that Lopez-Lopez had failed to establish a nexus
between the persecution that he allegedly had suffered, or any
future persecution that he fears that he will suffer, and a
statutorily protected ground. The petition for review is denied.
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