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The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is now in session.

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Please be seated.

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All right.

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Good morning, everyone.

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Welcome to the Ninth Circuit.

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I'm Judge Sung.

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I'm happy to be here with my colleagues, Judge McCune and Judge Fitzwater, who is visiting us from the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation.

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And we really appreciate him giving us a helping hand this whole week.

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I'd also like to thank our

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excellent court staff, especially our courtroom deputy today, Ms.

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Dodds.

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And the following matters are submitted on the briefs, Serrano Osorio versus Bondi, Lopez Ramirez versus Bondi, Serrano Rios versus Bondi, and Contreras Percayo versus Bondi.

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And we'll take up the remaining cases in the order they appear on the calendar.

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Good morning.

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May it please the court, I'm Vanessa Gutierrez with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project on behalf of the petitioners, Maricela Lopez-Meras and her minor daughter.

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I'd like to reserve two minutes of my time for rebuttal if I may.

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Your honors, Ms.

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Lopez-Meras fled Mexico to escape years of persecution and torture in the form of domestic abuse, including ongoing rape and threats at the hands of her husband.

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I'd like to focus my arguments today on the asylum claim in which the agency made two fundamental errors requiring reversal.

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First, it improperly imposed a requirement that members of her particular social group be unable to physically separate as a result of persecution.

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And second, it ignored substantial evidence showing the Mexican government's inability to protect Ms.

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Lopez from her husband.

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The agency impermissibly redefined Ms.

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Lopez-Miraz's social group by misinterpreting what it means to be unable to leave a domestic relationship.

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Rather than recognizing this inability as encompassing various forms of constraint, the agency narrowly construed the social group.

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It found that Ms.

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Lopez-Miraz's husband tracked, harassed, and threatened her despite her attempted relocation, yet it still found that she left the relationship because she was not harmed during these interactions.

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By making physical separation the determining factor, the agency erroneously treats a relationship as a physical location rather than recognizing it as a societally defined connection between individuals.

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This court in Tias Reynosa v. Barr found that the inability to leave a relationship can derive from societal, economic, and cultural factors, not simply from persecutory harm.

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Similarly, the Sixth Circuit in Juan Antonio Vibar identified the error in making physical separation dispositive.

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It says, physical separation does not necessarily indicate that a relationship has ended.

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If it did, then any woman who escaped her persecutor and then filed for asylum would be denied.

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Let me ask a practical question.

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I understand that when she left, she didn't really leave in the sense that he stalked her and these phone calls and this continued.

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Yes, Your Honor.

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If we were to remand because of this misunderstanding of what it means to be in a domestic violence relationship, we have this more recent case by the Attorney General, SSFM.

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Yes.

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which was just issued maybe a month or two ago.

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And so I'm wondering would the essence of that and the defining of particular social groups for private conduct, would that affect your client or are we back to a situation where the Attorney General, the BIA accepted the social group and then go from there?

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I believe the BIA would have to consider the facts of this case in determining whether our client has met her burden of showing that she's part of this particular social group that she presented, and they would consider that case, but that's not binding here, and so we believe that she would still meet her burden.

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Following up on Judge McEwen's question, understanding that this is a horrific circumstance, given the record, where do we draw the line?

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It seems to me that this would open Pandora's box if we're saying that relief has to be granted here.

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Well, Your Honor, I believe that the line gets drawn at each individual case.

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So the facts is what is going to be the determining factor.

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And here, the facts in the record are sufficient to show that there was substantial evidence that she met her burden of showing membership in the particular social group.

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So I don't believe that it would open the floodgates.

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I think that each individual applicant would still have to prove that their facts meet the standard.

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And would that also apply to whether Mexico has the ability to address this concern?

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Yes, your honor.

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So there are cases where this court held that the government wasn't able to or was able to protect, but that's not the case in this in this individual circumstance.

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Would you move to that?

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We have a situation where, as I understand it, she didn't report any abuse to the police, and that's not uncommon in domestic abuse cases, and also particularly her view in Mexico that that would not net any positive reaction.

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But she still needs to meet the finding about unable and unwilling.

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Would you address that?

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Yes, of course, Your Honor.

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So in this case, there is evidence in the record that it would have been futile to report.

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And we see that through the expert declarations talking about the wide

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widespread nature of domestic violence, which the agency acknowledges.

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We also see in her specific situation that there is evidence that her abusive husband was connected to a cartel group and had individual acquaintances or friends that were members of the government.

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And that coupled with the country conditions of widespread corruption,

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show that the government would be unable and perhaps even unwilling to protect her.

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We can also look to the efficacy of the domestic violence laws.

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The agency makes a finding that because there is laws in Mexico that protect survivors of violence, that that's sufficient to show that she'd be protected.

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But that's not necessarily the case here.

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If we look to the one statistic that the agency cites,

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saying that 71% of domestic violence cases result in guilty verdicts.

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However, it doesn't acknowledge necessarily the fact that that's only about 1,500 total cases in Mexico.

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And it does on the alternative side acknowledge that domestic violence continues to be widespread.

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And that in and of itself shows that they would be unable or unwilling to protect her.

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So for example, madrigal beholder is informative in that it says that a single statistic out of context that gives it a contrary meaning does not counter the record evidence, and that's what we have here.

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In that case, the court found that the lack of state ability to control los setas in that case, when the BIA cited various statistics on the efforts of the Mexican government to combat drug violence in that case,

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But it didn't examine the efficacy of those efforts.

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And that's, again, what we have here.

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We have country conditions evidence that shows that in most cases, women do not file domestic violence complaints due to, among other things, fear of re-victimization by state agencies that blame victims and corruption within security forces.

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I know that we have cases that say you don't need

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report to government authorities in order to establish inability.

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But then the BIA says there's no evidence that the police would not have aided her.

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How do we measure that with substantial evidence and how do we fold that into a finding about unable and unwilling

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Yes, Your Honor, so we would look to the country conditions evidence, the expert declarations in this case that all point to the fact that laws by themselves aren't sufficient to show that the government is able and willing.

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We have to look at what is actually happening in the country.

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And again, the agency finds that domestic violence is widespread.

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We have willingness and ability.

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And the BIA did deal with willingness, correct?

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But not ability?

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Yes.

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But we only need to have shown one, right?

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And even for the sake of our argument, we say that they were willing.

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There is sufficient substantial evidence in the record that shows that they were unable.

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So, you know, we can look to the declaration of Alicia Elena Perez Duarte, who was herself appointed government official to address domestic violence in Mexico.

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And she resigned that position under protest because the situation on the ground was that domestic violence was not taken sufficiently seriously.

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And that in and of itself also shows the enormous social and cultural tolerance of gender-based abuse, resulting in virtual complicity of authorities.

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And that's in her declaration at 323 in the record.

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It further supports this conclusion in her declaration that there's

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There's state encouragement of reconciliation instead of pressing charges.

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There's police corruption.

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Rape itself, which is something we have here, is rarely reported due to the ineffective authorities, social stigma, fear of retribution, and the fact that prosecution is unlikely.

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So.

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So where there's, under Colby Holder, there is indication that the agency didn't consider all of the evidence before it.

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A catch-all phrase doesn't suffice.

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And so that's what we have here.

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They're saying, yes, we weighed the evidence.

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We looked at the evidence.

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But they omitted highly probative facts and ignoring that they themselves find that the husband,

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was attempting to locate her.

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Up until one month before her merits hearing, during a phone call, he calls and says, even if you hide under a rock, I will find you.

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And that shows that he believes that he will have free range if she returns.

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He also conditions divorce on her returning to Mexico, so an attempt to show

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To lure her back and there's an on this case That you know talks about the dynamics of domestic violence and how they don't have to be Physical abuse they don't there's lots of power and control happening here that the that the That that applies in this case So

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Turning back to Anandas the Ashcroft, it states that non-physical actions rise to the level of domestic violence when tactics of control are intertwined with the threats of harm in order to maintain the perpetrator's dominance through fear.

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And that, I believe, is what is happening here.

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I want to point the court to one more

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important piece of evidence in the record, which is the declaration of Professor Nancy Lemmon, which this court has recognized as an expert in domestic violence.

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And that was in Rodriguez Tornes v. Garland, where Judge Paez notes in his concurrence that she's a leading authority on domestic violence.

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And that she provides, you know, fact-based research evidence on what constitutes domestic violence.

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And the agency failed to look at those factors here and instead made assumptions about what Mexican society would determine is or is not the ability to leave a relationship.

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Could you go back to the Mexican government allegations?

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Yes.

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I understand all the evidence, the experts' evidence, the reality of on the ground in Mexico.

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But does that mean that in every case that the Mexican government is unable

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to protect or prevent gender bias, gender discrimination?

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No, Your Honor.

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So it means just that when those societal factors coupled with the facts of any given case show the inability, then the court.

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What distinguishes her case from others?

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That's what I'm trying to understand.

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What's either the limiting or the expansive factor that we look at in trying to determine the inability of Mexico?

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So in her case, there is evidence that her abusive partner has ties to cartel groups and government officials.

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That coupled with the country conditions evidence of widespread domestic violence and examples of police corruption show sufficiently that there's substantial evidence in the record that

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in this particular case that there wouldn't be an ability to protect.

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And with that I see I'm at time.

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Thank you.

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Go ahead.

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Your microphone is muted.

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Sorry, we're having a minor tech issue.

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He tested.

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I know, it's all right.

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He just needs to turn on in some way.

[00:15:07] Speaker ?:
No?

[00:15:08] Speaker 04:
Kwame?

[00:15:08] Speaker 04:
Oh.

[00:15:15] Speaker 05:
Yes, she was definitely on that side.

[00:15:19] Speaker 04:
Can you hear us?

[00:15:22] Speaker 04:
That's good.

[00:15:22] Speaker 04:
We're 50% there.

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You somehow are muted.

[00:15:29] Speaker 03:
I think he's showing us that he turned on his mic.

[00:15:32] Speaker 03:
Yeah, I don't see the mute sign.

[00:15:34] Speaker 05:
Mr. Nsenga, it looks like it's on that side.

[00:15:37] Speaker 05:
It's good on your system, but we're still not getting you.

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If your tech is there, maybe a reconnect?

[00:15:45] Speaker 04:
No tech.

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Should we?

[00:15:53] Speaker 03:
Yeah.

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If it's all right, maybe we'll give you a few minutes to resolve this and we can't, then we'll move to another case until you get resolved.

[00:16:06] Speaker 04:
You could go to the next one.

[00:16:07] Speaker 03:
We can go to the next one.

[00:16:15] Speaker 01:
Hello?

[00:16:16] Speaker 01:
There we go.

[00:16:16] Speaker 03:
Excellent.

[00:16:18] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:16:18] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:16:19] Speaker 03:
Sorry.

[00:16:20] Speaker 03:
No worries.

[00:16:21] Speaker ?:
Bye.

[00:16:23] Speaker 01:
My apologies, Your Honors.

[00:16:26] Speaker 01:
Where were we?

[00:16:27] Speaker 01:
May I please record Andrew Nsinga on behalf of the Attorney General.

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To begin largely where petitioner leaves off, the record does not compel reversal of conclusion that the Mexican government would be unable or unwilling to protect her from the attackers.

[00:16:43] Speaker 01:
This case is strikingly similar to this court's decision of Alaska's Gaspar, which quoted Bringus Rodriguez that says that the record must conclusively show that the records would not have aided the applicant if they had reported the criminality.

[00:17:01] Speaker 01:
Here, there is no direct evidence about what the police would or would not have done because Pitcher Scherr did not leave it.

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So we are largely left, well, we are solely left discussing country conditions evidence

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To go to Judge McEwen's point about why would this not be essentially every case being unable and willing, the answer would be because Petitioner can point to the fact that her husband once played music for a gang.

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That's the extent of the specific gang involvement.

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He may have played some music once for a gang.

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But to the end of the day, Petitioner is just simply relying on essentially very broad and generic allegations

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Some of them about domestic violence, but many of them simply about very generic human rights population, human rights violations, and very generic criminality concerns.

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This court obviously is well aware that it has cases involving where, say, criminals claim that the Mexican government is going to persecute them because they're criminals.

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Yet, the court is always faced with this back and forth in these cases.

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In cases where the alien or applicant is a criminal, well, the Mexican government's fascist and totally able, they're going to search them out and find these criminals.

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Yet in cases where they don't, where the applicant wants to suggest essentially the government of Mexico is just an incompetent keystone cops group of people.

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But the record obviously is much more complicated than that.

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The immigration judge recognized that there is corruption in Mexico, as there are in many countries.

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perhaps every country, that they recognize that there is ongoing criminality.

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But just as in Velasquez Gas Bar, which dealt with Guatemala, the Mexican government has taken distinct steps.

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Now, of course, petitioner just waves a hand, says, ah, that's just legislative hope.

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Well, perhaps we should give legislatures a bit more credit than simply passing laws out of hope.

[00:19:04] Speaker 01:
They are trying to make concrete and they have made concrete changes.

[00:19:08] Speaker 01:
The Mexican executive branch has made concrete changes.

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They increased monitors of femicide, 17 centers for women, and specifically a program to show home state of Guerrero.

[00:19:22] Speaker 01:
Now, again, just wave that aside and say, oh, none of that matters because criminality.

[00:19:29] Speaker 01:
Well, but again, we have to remind ourselves that as the Supreme Court reminded all the courts and the parties, that the record must compel the reversal in these cases.

[00:19:40] Speaker 01:
And the record does not compel the conclusion that the Mexican government would be unable, would have been or will be unable or unwilling to protect Petitioner from her husband's abuse.

[00:19:53] Speaker 01:
A petitioner largely in the brief relies on the mere fact that she's credible.

[00:19:57] Speaker 01:
But again, Ming Dai emphasizes that the mere fact that a witness is credible doesn't mean that a fact finder, any of this would be true about a jury, must find everything they say adequate to meet a burden of proof.

[00:20:12] Speaker 01:
So again, we're left with

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pretty generic country conditions and evidence where the immigration judge relied on substantial evidence of the Mexican government passing specific laws, putting in place programs to aid victims of domestic violence.

[00:20:29] Speaker 03:
So what are we supposed to do when the same reports that the IJ relied on, you know, referring to these programs in the next sentence says the programs are largely ineffective?

[00:20:45] Speaker 01:
But I don't think they're largely ineffective.

[00:20:47] Speaker 01:
I'm not sure exactly what specific part of the record.

[00:20:51] Speaker 01:
But this court recognized in Velazquez-Gaspar that programs will not necessarily be the maximally effective.

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And the fact that they're not, say, the most effective or as effective as we might hope they would be does not mean the Mexican government or any government, in that case Guatemalan government, would be unable or unwilling to protect the victims of crime.

[00:21:15] Speaker 03:
So I understand the government's concern that when the petitioner has not actually reported to the police, they need some evidence to show government unwillingness and inability to protect them.

[00:21:29] Speaker 03:
At the same time, our precedent says they don't need to report to the police.

[00:21:37] Speaker 03:
So what, in your view, about your position,

[00:21:40] Speaker 03:
Where would you draw the line?

[00:21:41] Speaker 03:
So how would a petitioner who hasn't reported to the police show futility?

[00:21:48] Speaker 01:
But I think as the agency and this court have outlined, you do have to present, you're left relying on country conditions evidence.

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It should be emphasized, of course, like, yes, someone doesn't have to report to the crime.

[00:21:59] Speaker 01:
And obviously, the court's overruled its prior gap precedent.

[00:22:03] Speaker 01:
I suggest it's simply a null set.

[00:22:05] Speaker 01:
We have no idea how the police sort of responded, had petitioner called them.

[00:22:10] Speaker 01:
Simply, we don't know.

[00:22:11] Speaker 01:
So, but it is petitioner's burden of proof.

[00:22:14] Speaker 01:
And before this court, it's the petitioner's burden of persuasion to show that the record compels the conclusion.

[00:22:20] Speaker 03:
So there are cases, though, in any case where the petitioner doesn't report, we don't know for certain how the police would have responded, correct?

[00:22:31] Speaker 03:
And you're acknowledging that they would be left with relying on country conditions evidence.

[00:22:37] Speaker 03:
And then we have cases that say they don't have to report.

[00:22:40] Speaker 03:
They can show futility.

[00:22:41] Speaker 03:
So they're going to be relying on the type of evidence relied on here to show futility.

[00:22:46] Speaker 03:
Is that correct?

[00:22:48] Speaker 03:
The type of evidence, yes.

[00:22:50] Speaker 03:
Is your position that that's never going to be sufficient or that it can be sufficient in some cases?

[00:22:56] Speaker 01:
Of course not.

[00:22:56] Speaker 01:
The attorney general has never suggested the evidence will never be sufficient.

[00:23:00] Speaker 03:
So what would the country conditions reports have to say to be sufficient?

[00:23:07] Speaker 01:
That is a good question.

[00:23:08] Speaker 01:
Largely, that has to be answered by a fact-finder, Your Honor.

[00:23:12] Speaker 01:
I can only answer to a degree, but it often becomes a difficulty that courts want to ask hypotheticals.

[00:23:18] Speaker 01:
And I understand that question.

[00:23:20] Speaker 03:
The difficulty is when we get in such fact-intensive issues, that is a... Well, I'm asking because you're raising the parade of horribles of that if you're going to open the door to every single applicant getting

[00:23:35] Speaker 03:
being able to show futility.

[00:23:36] Speaker 03:
So I understand you want a limiting principle on the other side.

[00:23:40] Speaker 03:
When I'm asking what would be the limiting principle to say that there's at least some cases that they would be able to demonstrate futility.

[00:23:48] Speaker 01:
First of all, I'm not trying to trot out a parade of horribles at all.

[00:23:53] Speaker 01:
We're just simply trying to say that when you look at just pretty generic evidence and say that record compels reversal, then that would essentially end the analysis and create, in fact, a more per se principle.

[00:24:09] Speaker 01:
But I guess the

[00:24:12] Speaker 01:
The more generic and perhaps frankly unhelpful answer to your question is we're not asking for a principle.

[00:24:18] Speaker 01:
This is just a fact-specific and a very, very factually intense question that's going to rely on the specific evidence before the court.

[00:24:27] Speaker 01:
And again, what Patricia relies on is fairly generic country conditions evidence.

[00:24:34] Speaker 01:
Some of it has nothing to do with domestic violence.

[00:24:36] Speaker 01:
Some of it's just about criminality.

[00:24:38] Speaker 01:
Some of it's just about human rights violations.

[00:24:43] Speaker 01:
But of course, in the country that's, I believe, about half the population of the United States, some of that's gonna occur.

[00:24:49] Speaker 01:
But what Patricia has to show is some relevance to her particular situation.

[00:24:55] Speaker 01:
And before the court, it's going to show that the record would have to compel any reasonable fact-finder that must show that the Mexican government will be unable or unwilling to have protected her or will protect her.

[00:25:07] Speaker 01:
And although petitioner doesn't touch on CAD, I think it bears noting that that is essentially dispositive of petitioner's CAD application, as that would also go to the agency determination and acquiescence.

[00:25:21] Speaker 01:
Turning to the second and independently dispositive determination, the record doesn't compel that Petitioner was and still is and will be in the group of Mexican women in domestic relationships that they are unable to leave.

[00:25:34] Speaker 01:
What this case reflects is obviously serious violent abuse that has declined as time went on.

[00:25:42] Speaker 01:
She left the marriage.

[00:25:44] Speaker 01:
Now, I guess that really is the crux of it, isn't it?

[00:25:47] Speaker 01:
Whether or not you're in a domestic relationship, essentially, by petitioner notion, indefinitely.

[00:25:54] Speaker 03:
So how do you view the Sixth Circuit's decision in Juan Antonio versus Barr, where they said physical separation can't be the reason why you would say the petitioner is no longer in this

[00:26:11] Speaker 03:
because otherwise, by definition, every petitioner would no longer be a member of the PSG.

[00:26:20] Speaker 03:
And so what they talked about was that records showed that she was essentially unable to legally divorce her partner, and that, in that case, meant she was still a member of the PSG.

[00:26:35] Speaker 01:
Well, I think what your honor said about the legal legally divorce is the most pertinent aspect of it.

[00:26:41] Speaker 01:
These since a matter of Archie came out and since before, sorry, a RCG if, you know, obviously, we say Archie here.

[00:26:52] Speaker 01:
The applicants have tended to try to formulate around that ball of cases.

[00:26:57] Speaker 01:
And that specific one in Archie was married Guatemalan women unable to leave a relationship.

[00:27:05] Speaker 01:
And in the Cirque Cirque's case, it was defined by being married.

[00:27:08] Speaker 01:
So the applicant there apparently felt that her husband was motivated by the legal nature of the relationship.

[00:27:15] Speaker 01:
Petitioner, like many applicants, have sort of tried to modify it.

[00:27:21] Speaker 01:
and then left off the married part of it.

[00:27:24] Speaker 01:
So one can obviously be married without cohabitating or being, in some sense of the word, domestic.

[00:27:33] Speaker 01:
But Petitioner chose, represented by the same council all the time, to define it by domestic relationship.

[00:27:41] Speaker 01:
Tishira has offered at no point in this litigation, from the beginning of the application on through the brief, so what does domestic mean?

[00:27:48] Speaker 01:
It's her burden of proof to say what the domestic relationship is.

[00:27:52] Speaker 01:
Absent any meaningful attempt, the agency did what any judge

[00:27:57] Speaker 01:
or adjudication, just took the words at what they mean.

[00:27:59] Speaker 01:
A domestic relationship suggests some manner of cohabitation, some manner of, yeah, that sort of relationship.

[00:28:08] Speaker 01:
She could have defined it, for example, by romantic relationship.

[00:28:10] Speaker 01:
She could have said parenting relationship.

[00:28:12] Speaker 01:
She added the adjective, not the agency, and if petitioner felt that domestic doesn't mean

[00:28:21] Speaker 01:
domestic, then her and her lawyer should have redefined it to the agency at some point.

[00:28:26] Speaker 01:
And she didn't.

[00:28:27] Speaker 04:
Let's just be practical about the facts of her particular situation.

[00:28:35] Speaker 04:
We all agree she was in a relationship.

[00:28:37] Speaker 04:
She was married.

[00:28:38] Speaker 04:
She's being abused.

[00:28:40] Speaker 04:
She's being raped unwillingly by her husband.

[00:28:47] Speaker 04:
She has a couple of alternative, stay the course and just continue being abused in situ or try to leave, but she hasn't been able to terminate the relationship.

[00:28:59] Speaker 04:
She can't get divorced.

[00:29:02] Speaker 04:
So it seems to me that a domestic violence victim is kind of between a rock and a hard place the way you define the options vis-a-vis asylum.

[00:29:14] Speaker 01:
No, Your Honor.

[00:29:15] Speaker 01:
It's simply not.

[00:29:16] Speaker 01:
The problem is that we can, in these cases, we can just focus on the severity of harm.

[00:29:22] Speaker 01:
And we will never get anywhere past it.

[00:29:25] Speaker 01:
And there is no way for me to stand here and say, hey, that's great.

[00:29:31] Speaker 01:
We're ever going to move past the severity.

[00:29:33] Speaker 01:
We can't.

[00:29:34] Speaker 01:
So there's no attempt to diminish the severity of the harm that has occurred here.

[00:29:39] Speaker 04:
And I appreciate your saying that.

[00:29:42] Speaker 01:
But what we have is a person who found out her husband was being unfaithful, moved in with their mom's house, and then her husband continued to contact her.

[00:29:52] Speaker 01:
And then she went to the friend's house, and he didn't go to her house.

[00:29:56] Speaker 01:
And then, even now, what she has said is that he calls to talk to his daughter.

[00:30:02] Speaker 01:
And fair enough, his daughter's been taken to a foreign country.

[00:30:06] Speaker 01:
Does he continue to make vague threats?

[00:30:08] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:30:09] Speaker 01:
But this really is about sort of our concern about severity of harm.

[00:30:13] Speaker 01:
But what we have to talk about is, is she still, maybe she's married, maybe he has multiple.

[00:30:19] Speaker 01:
On her deathbed, will she still be in a domestic relationship, unable to leave?

[00:30:26] Speaker 01:
Where's the end point of that?

[00:30:28] Speaker 03:
Well, if I understand correctly, you're saying that this case is

[00:30:33] Speaker 03:
not similar to Juan Antonio simply because she didn't define the PSG by unable to leave a marriage because she used the term domestic relationship.

[00:30:42] Speaker 03:
Is that correct?

[00:30:44] Speaker 03:
And if she had used, if she had said domestic violence victims unable to leave a marriage, then this case would be similar to Juan Antonio.

[00:30:51] Speaker 03:
Is that your argument?

[00:30:53] Speaker 01:
It'd be different.

[00:30:54] Speaker 03:
Petitioner then of course the difficulty about modifying groups and ever morphing them is then the whole Nexus evidence changes the cognizability analysis changes That's why I'm just trying to understand your argument in response to my question about wanting to you Is it is that the reason why you're saying this case is different that the fact that the Sixth Circuit distinguished between physical separation and divorce and you're saying we can't draw that same

[00:31:22] Speaker 03:
distinction here because she defined the PSG based on domestic relationship instead of marriage.

[00:31:30] Speaker 01:
If I can answer your question, you're on my same time.

[00:31:33] Speaker 01:
In pertinent part, yes, because the marriage, they defined it by a legal relationship.

[00:31:38] Speaker 01:
But it does emphasize the Sixth Circuit doesn't say physical separation is irrelevant.

[00:31:42] Speaker 01:
And no one's defined this as simply saying physical relationship is the be all and end all.

[00:31:47] Speaker 01:
It's a broader analysis as the agency realized.

[00:31:49] Speaker 01:
So we ask that the court deny the petition.

[00:31:53] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:32:03] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, briefly, I'd like to address Velazquez-Gaspar.

[00:32:07] Speaker 02:
That case is distinguishable from our case here.

[00:32:11] Speaker 02:
In that case, the court's findings hinge greatly on two issues.

[00:32:19] Speaker 02:
that there was a shelter in the individual's town.

[00:32:23] Speaker 02:
There's no such evidence in the record here.

[00:32:24] Speaker 02:
In fact, there's evidence that our client knows of no one who's been able to seek protection.

[00:32:31] Speaker 02:
And it also talks a lot about how there was acquaintances in that case that were urging the petitioner to seek protection, and that shows

[00:32:42] Speaker 02:
that the community believed that the government would protect her.

[00:32:45] Speaker 02:
And in this case, we know that she's even aware of individuals who reported crime and were unable to seek protection.

[00:32:55] Speaker 02:
Secondly, I'd like to address the futility argument.

[00:32:58] Speaker 03:
So... Sorry, just where in the record did she say she knows people who actually reported crime and did not receive help?

[00:33:05] Speaker 02:
Yes, just one second.

[00:33:06] Speaker 02:
I'll find that for you.

[00:33:41] Speaker 02:
It's in her testimony.

[00:33:53] Speaker 04:
Maybe what you could do is, we used to have, maybe we still have these little sheets for kind of additional information.

[00:33:59] Speaker 04:
You could provide us with that citation electronically or through the clerk, making sure that council also has the advantage of that.

[00:34:08] Speaker 04:
28J?

[00:34:08] Speaker 02:
Yeah.

[00:34:09] Speaker 02:
Okay, will do.

[00:34:13] Speaker 02:
Um.

[00:34:20] Speaker 03:
Do you want to go ahead and wrap up?

[00:34:21] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:34:22] Speaker 02:
And so again, the court acknowledges that whether this is a domestic relationship, defined as a domestic relationship or a marriage.

[00:34:31] Speaker 02:
In fact, it is a marriage.

[00:34:32] Speaker 02:
But regardless, the country conditions evidence, the expert declarations don't make a distinction in how society views a relationship between individuals in the situation, a couple.

[00:34:47] Speaker 02:
That is, she properly defined her social group sufficiently enough to show that she is, there's substantial evidence that she's a member of this particular social group and there's also substantial evidence in the country conditions and expert declarations that she, that the government would be unable to protect her.

[00:35:06] Speaker 02:
And with that we ask that the court remand.

[00:35:08] Speaker 02:
Thank you.