[00:00:00] Speaker 03:
OK, can you hear me OK?

[00:00:02] Speaker 00:
We sure can.

[00:00:02] Speaker 00:
All right.

[00:00:03] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honor, and may it please the court.

[00:00:04] Speaker 00:
My name is Luis Cortez, and I'm here on behalf of the petitioners.

[00:00:07] Speaker 00:
I'll endeavor to reserve about two minutes for rebuttal, and I'll watch my time.

[00:00:12] Speaker 00:
Your Honors, I would like to address three things I think before the court, the first being the CAT evaluation by the agency, then followed by the particular social group evaluation, both the cognizability and then the nexus.

[00:00:23] Speaker 00:
But I think I can try to dispose of the CAT argument quickly enough to try to get to the other arguments.

[00:00:29] Speaker 00:
Go a little slower, would you please counsel him?

[00:00:31] Speaker 00:
Yes, of course, Your Honor.

[00:00:32] Speaker 00:
Excuse me.

[00:00:33] Speaker 00:
Here, Your Honor, the cat analysis is structurally deficient, and I think this is what we want the court to fix.

[00:00:40] Speaker 00:
First, our argument is that

[00:00:42] Speaker 00:
The agencies cat evaluation did not grapple or actually evaluate the evidence as required by this court and by required by the law.

[00:00:53] Speaker 00:
For example, they did not provide or did not mention the country condition evidence that was submitted.

[00:00:59] Speaker 00:
into the record and there were hundreds of pages of it.

[00:01:02] Speaker 00:
Now the government, what they argue is that they cite the cases about the court not needing to cite to specific pinpoint aspects of the case and that the court seemed to have like a general, we looked at the evidence and so therefore that's sufficient for this court to conclude that that's what the agency did in the CAT evaluation.

[00:01:24] Speaker 00:
But this court's case in Andrade, I think, sets a specific standard where CAT requires an independent evaluation of the country condition reports.

[00:01:35] Speaker 02:
So what is it about the country condition reports that would be helpful here on the CAT claim?

[00:01:41] Speaker 00:
There's a few, Your Honor.

[00:01:43] Speaker 02:
Be helpful regarding the cat claim.

[00:01:45] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:01:45] Speaker 00:
Your Honor, things like, and I have some of the sites here for you, one of the things that we submitted into the record was that the homicide rates had increased by 45%, but when the out of the fences took place in this very municipality, and that the actions that this, which they now become a state actor,

[00:02:08] Speaker 00:
that they engaged in torture.

[00:02:10] Speaker 00:
And that evidence came from a diversity of sources, from congressional reports to former military personnel to news reports.

[00:02:20] Speaker 00:
So it came from all over about the type of harm that torture specifically prohibits or the contravention.

[00:02:29] Speaker 02:
And relating to the auto defenses.

[00:02:31] Speaker 00:
to the outer defenses as they were conducting it in the location that they were controlling, which is where the petitioners were directly living.

[00:02:38] Speaker 00:
They were living in the birthplace.

[00:02:40] Speaker 00:
And so there are all these country condition reports that indicate the likelihood of torture, which is what the immigration judge had the biggest problem here with.

[00:02:50] Speaker 00:
The immigration judge found that after the offenses were state actors, that the actions that they were conducting would be torture.

[00:02:57] Speaker 00:
The question was about what was the likelihood.

[00:02:59] Speaker 00:
And so in the hundreds of pages of evidence, the agency disposed of it with about a single paragraph that doesn't itself mention any of the country condition reports.

[00:03:11] Speaker 00:
The mentioning that there was some evidence that was mentioned was done earlier in the case.

[00:03:17] Speaker 00:
And the cases that the government cites to is specific to asylum, the asylum evaluation.

[00:03:24] Speaker 00:
And I think this is particularly important because in the Ninth Circuit, things like country condition reports alone could be sufficient to establish cat eligibility.

[00:03:34] Speaker 00:
So not mentioning in the CAT analysis becomes a structural defect that this court can then fix and remand so that they can actually look at the country condition reports as required by Andrade.

[00:03:47] Speaker 02:
You would want us to remand as to CAT with directions to consider all the country conditions evidence.

[00:03:54] Speaker 00:
I think that that's the most appropriate here, Your Honor.

[00:03:56] Speaker 02:
Anything else they didn't consider?

[00:03:58] Speaker 00:
Uh, in terms of the cat evaluation, yes.

[00:04:01] Speaker 00:
Uh, yes.

[00:04:02] Speaker 00:
I mean, um, if, excuse me, the, um, things like, uh, I was like to the case in AR three 95, that talks about how the, um, homicides wrote for 45%.

[00:04:13] Speaker 00:
Um, the AR three 18.

[00:04:15] Speaker 00:
Talks specifically about how the out of the fences who were became state-sponsored it became out of them They themselves started working eventually with the organized crime groups that ended up being there Which increases the likelihood because now there are these two groups that petitioner has to worry about we also have pages Was there any evidence that the Knights Templar of state actors?

[00:04:39] Speaker ?:
I

[00:04:40] Speaker 00:
No, there's no evidence that the Templars are state actors, but the Out-of-Defense House, who are state actors, were working directly with them.

[00:04:47] Speaker 01:
Well, but you can't increase the likelihood by non-state actors.

[00:04:51] Speaker 00:
Not by non-state actors, but Your Honor, the cat evaluation is either by the government or somebody that the government acquiesces to.

[00:04:58] Speaker 00:
So if the state of the Out-of-Defense House, who is the police force there, is working directly with them, that's the acquiescence.

[00:05:05] Speaker 01:
Are they acquiescing to the Knights Templar?

[00:05:07] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:05:09] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:05:09] Speaker 00:
That's what the country condition.

[00:05:11] Speaker 01:
The offenses were fighting the Knights Templar.

[00:05:13] Speaker 00:
That's the, that's the very interesting thing that happened in, in this, in this situation in Mexico is that they rose to do that.

[00:05:20] Speaker 00:
And eventually once they got control of the territory, they ended up working with the very same group that they were fighting against.

[00:05:28] Speaker 01:
And do you have any citations to the record?

[00:05:31] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:05:31] Speaker 00:
If you look at page, um, uh, three 18,

[00:05:36] Speaker 00:
There was a member stating that the outdoor defenses and nightclub employers are pretty much on the same team.

[00:05:47] Speaker 00:
And this was a member of the outdoor defenses saying that.

[00:05:51] Speaker 00:
And so it's an interesting phenomenon as to what ended up happening.

[00:05:55] Speaker 00:
This group gave power and then that power corrupted.

[00:05:58] Speaker 03:
But the- Do you not think, I mean, on AR 8081 that the IJ didn't, you know,

[00:06:05] Speaker 03:
essentially acknowledge the country conditions report in describing the auto defenses as having a connection with the government authorities.

[00:06:13] Speaker 03:
and having been deputized to some degree, is that not some indication that the IJ considered the evidence?

[00:06:21] Speaker 00:
Maybe, Your Honor, but the rule that Andrade establishes is that, first of all, they need to look at the State Department reports if they were filed, and those were not mentioned in the CAT evaluation.

[00:06:31] Speaker 00:
And Andrade makes that pretty clear.

[00:06:34] Speaker 00:
And so the structural programming begins from there.

[00:06:37] Speaker 00:
Even if there was some indication that they might have been hinted to it, it doesn't grapple with it in the way that the law requires it.

[00:06:43] Speaker 00:
And that's specific to the CAT evaluation because CAT does require an independent analysis, given that there's just a different structure to look at it when we're looking at likelihood.

[00:06:54] Speaker 00:
And so those, I think, are the main structural defects, Your Honor.

[00:06:59] Speaker 00:
But as we argued in the brief, and I won't spend too much time on this, but even if the court comes to the conclusion that there wasn't an Andrade violation where they didn't look at it, and so that they did look at the country condition evidence,

[00:07:12] Speaker 00:
Then, looking at the weight of the evidence, the immigration judge's one paragraph doesn't seem to grapple with all of these very important statistical and very significant question of the likelihood of torture, which is the only question that was remaining here.

[00:07:29] Speaker 00:
Because he said there was a possibility of torture, but he said that it falls short to the likelihood of torture.

[00:07:35] Speaker 03:
And so the court doesn't have to reweigh the evidence.

[00:07:38] Speaker 03:
What do you think in the country conditions report

[00:07:41] Speaker 03:
would suggest that your client has a particularized risk of torture.

[00:07:45] Speaker 00:
Yes.

[00:07:46] Speaker 00:
So, citing back to the AR 395, where they talk about how the rate of homicides increased by 45%, but also, Your Honor, the... I'll try to get the specifics, but in the record... It's not particularized to this man, is it?

[00:08:07] Speaker 01:
Excuse me?

[00:08:08] Speaker 01:
It's not particularized to this man.

[00:08:10] Speaker 01:
I think Judge Bress asked you... Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:08:13] Speaker 01:
...to particularize increase in risk.

[00:08:15] Speaker 00:
For for the petitioner.

[00:08:17] Speaker 00:
Yes, your honor the the increase for him specifically was that the out of the fences Members came to him specifically repeatedly they knew who he was and at first they were asking for things like money and and other types of resources Which he obliged and he had been doing for quite some time even in the extortion portions of it He just figured that I was a part of life in Mexico and it wasn't until they told him that they were they wanted him and his son to officially

[00:08:43] Speaker 00:
participate, physically participate, and they told them what would happen if they didn't.

[00:08:48] Speaker 00:
And so when he told them, I would think about it to try to get them at bay, and then he left.

[00:08:54] Speaker 00:
So they knew specifically who it was.

[00:08:55] Speaker 00:
And this is a town of about 10,000 people that this government forced a set of roadblocks.

[00:09:02] Speaker 00:
So we're talking about a population that's very specifically geographically circumscribed.

[00:09:07] Speaker 00:
and what the rest of the country conditions also report is that they were looking for men specifically who are going to who are of a fit a particular physical prototype in order to help them.

[00:09:19] Speaker 00:
Once the outdoor defenses started coming in people knew who they were coming after and there was an example for example where

[00:09:27] Speaker 00:
When someone, the Out to the Fences, even suspected of them of being against the Out to the Fences, they arrested him in front of his family and then they sent him to what was described in the country condition reports as a torture chamber.

[00:09:39] Speaker 00:
And this was done by someone who was there witnessing what was happening.

[00:09:42] Speaker 00:
And that they were picking up seemingly innocent men because of the perception that if you're not helping us, then you must be part of the... Same town?

[00:09:51] Speaker 00:
In the same municipality.

[00:09:53] Speaker 00:
And I think it happened a few miles away, but it was all by the outer defenses that were done in that same area.

[00:09:59] Speaker 00:
And it was the municipality that had the roadblocks in it.

[00:10:02] Speaker 00:
I'm about to end my time here.

[00:10:04] Speaker 03:
We'll put two minutes on the clock for rebuttal for you.

[00:10:06] Speaker 00:
Oh, thank you, Your Honor.

[00:10:07] Speaker 00:
I appreciate the generosity.

[00:10:08] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:10:08] Speaker 03:
Mr. Romero.

[00:10:19] Speaker 04:
May it please the Court, Jeffrey Least, appearing on behalf of the Attorney General.

[00:10:23] Speaker 04:
Substantial evidence supports the agency's denial of the petitioner's applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Torture Convention.

[00:10:31] Speaker 04:
The court or opposing counsel has spent a lot of time on the CAD analysis.

[00:10:34] Speaker 04:
If the court would like me to start there, I can certainly do so.

[00:10:38] Speaker 04:
In this case, the agency properly considered the evidence that was before it.

[00:10:43] Speaker 04:
Now the immigration judge did not specifically go through all of the country conditions evidence.

[00:10:48] Speaker 04:
The board did, and on appeal, note that it did consider the entirety of the record.

[00:10:52] Speaker 04:
What we're looking for here is individualized evidence, particularized evidence such that the applicant is more likely than not to suffer torture if he returns to his home country.

[00:11:02] Speaker 04:
Here we don't have evidence of past torture.

[00:11:05] Speaker 04:
We also don't have any evidence of a continuing interest in him.

[00:11:08] Speaker 04:
When the petitioner left to go to Juarez, he was not targeted for any kind of harm at that point.

[00:11:12] Speaker 04:
His family, who remained back home in La Rwanda, was not targeted or threatened or there were no recruitment attempts made at that time.

[00:11:20] Speaker 03:
How old was the son at that time?

[00:11:23] Speaker 04:
I don't know his exact age.

[00:11:24] Speaker 04:
I believe he was like in his teenage years or just about there.

[00:11:28] Speaker 03:
But the, the, the, they had tried to get the son to be in the out of defenses previously.

[00:11:33] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:11:34] Speaker 04:
So when the out of defenses, initially they were approaching him, the petitioner for like, uh, material support.

[00:11:41] Speaker 04:
And then they came and approached him to recruit him and his oldest son.

[00:11:45] Speaker 03:
So you're saying after he left, there were no further efforts to recruit the son, at least we're aware of.

[00:11:51] Speaker 04:
As far as we're aware of, no, Your Honor, nor is there any evidence that after the petitioners have left and come to the United States that there's anybody in Mexico specifically seeking to torture them if they return.

[00:12:02] Speaker 04:
As far as the country conditions evidence itself, this court recently in a case called Encarnacion said that it's an error for the agency to fail to consider

[00:12:12] Speaker 04:
potentially dispositive country conditions evidence, and that's not what we have here.

[00:12:17] Speaker 04:
Again, we're looking for individualized or particularized evidence.

[00:12:20] Speaker 04:
The country conditions evidence here is of general applicability.

[00:12:24] Speaker 04:
It discusses cartel violence, increases of harm that could be applicable to anybody in terms of homicide.

[00:12:29] Speaker 03:
Is it not a little closer than that, just given the region?

[00:12:32] Speaker 04:
It is, Your Honor.

[00:12:34] Speaker 04:
I think that the closest evidence we have that actually pertains to the petitioner's claim is this documentary that was created called Cartel Land, which deals with the out of defense us in the province that the petitioner is from.

[00:12:45] Speaker 04:
But the immigration judge did address that evidence.

[00:12:47] Speaker 04:
Granted, it was in the context of asylum.

[00:12:50] Speaker 04:
But the immigration judge did note that, you know, that evidence had been presented.

[00:12:54] Speaker 04:
And then if you actually look at the agency's analysis of the CAT claims, this is not a case where they're saying there's no evidence in the record to suggest that there's any likelihood of harm.

[00:13:03] Speaker 04:
They acknowledge that the auto defense us are a problem, and then there is a possibility of harm, but it falls short of the legal requirement of it being more likely than not.

[00:13:13] Speaker 04:
And if you look at the immigration judge's discussion of this, I believe it's on page 79 of the record,

[00:13:19] Speaker 04:
He notes that this incident that occurred where an individual was taken away from his daughter and was subsequently harmed, it almost seemed to be a random act.

[00:13:27] Speaker 02:
and a random act of violence cannot really provide any... Didn't the petitioner testify that his friends had been tortured or persecuted by... I believe that he testified that they had been targeted.

[00:13:40] Speaker 02:
Or in the same sort of situation as he was.

[00:13:42] Speaker 04:
I believe that they were targeted for recruitment.

[00:13:46] Speaker 04:
I don't recall them being tortured, but it could be in the record.

[00:13:49] Speaker 04:
I don't recall that specific aspect.

[00:13:53] Speaker 03:
If there are any further questions about... What were you referring to about the consideration of the country conditions report in the asylum?

[00:14:01] Speaker 04:
Yes, it's on page...

[00:14:07] Speaker 04:
Page 79 of the records, the immigration judge's decision, and he discusses this documentary that had been created.

[00:14:13] Speaker 03:
The Netflix documentary?

[00:14:15] Speaker 03:
Yes.

[00:14:15] Speaker 03:
Is that the country conditions evidence, or you're taking that as part of it?

[00:14:19] Speaker 04:
I'm taking that as probably the closest and most relevant evidence submitted to his actual claim.

[00:14:24] Speaker 04:
The country conditions evidence is much more broad.

[00:14:27] Speaker 04:
And again, we're looking here at individualized evidence to suggest this individual is more likely than not.

[00:14:32] Speaker 04:
to suffer torture.

[00:14:33] Speaker 04:
So if it's evidence of cartel violence that is throughout Mexico or evidence of, you know, things of that nature, it's not going to really be enough on its own in the absence of any continued interest in the petitioner to suggest that it's more likely than not that he will himself will face torture.

[00:14:49] Speaker 03:
What is the degree to which the IJ needs to engage with the

[00:14:54] Speaker 03:
country conditions evidence because, you know, one could say, well, it's not specifically discussed, at least not in great detail in the IJ's write-up.

[00:15:05] Speaker 04:
I don't know that there's any bright line rules for what needs to be said or how detailed it needs to be, but I think it needs to be that the immigration judge, there's evidence in the record that the immigration judge has considered the evidence.

[00:15:18] Speaker 04:
But again, the agency, the immigration judge and the board don't have to write about every single piece of the evidence.

[00:15:22] Speaker 04:
It's whether when you look at the entirety of the decision, if it's clear that the immigration judge was actually looking at the evidence here.

[00:15:28] Speaker 04:
And I think that when we're looking at the way the immigration judge addressed the cat claim, because it was based on the evidence in the record, even if it was not specifically mentioned, that it was sufficient in this case to pass that threshold.

[00:15:41] Speaker 02:
Do you think his refusal to join up with the auto defenses would have, you know,

[00:15:48] Speaker 02:
characterized him, he would have been recognized, or he would have been categorized as somebody who was opposed to the auto defenses?

[00:15:54] Speaker 04:
There's not evidence in the record to suggest that, Your Honor.

[00:15:57] Speaker 04:
He testified to that?

[00:15:58] Speaker 04:
He testified that when they approached him, he said that he would think about it, and then he left.

[00:16:03] Speaker 04:
And then there was no subsequent interaction.

[00:16:04] Speaker 02:
He never joined, right?

[00:16:05] Speaker 04:
He didn't join.

[00:16:06] Speaker 04:
So I mean, there's been no continued interest in him, so there's no evidence in the record to suggest that he had.

[00:16:11] Speaker 02:
Well, he testified, as I mentioned earlier, he testified that his friends, some of his friends had been

[00:16:17] Speaker 02:
threatened and harmed by the autodefense.

[00:16:19] Speaker 04:
Right, but I think that that predated his interactions.

[00:16:23] Speaker 04:
So we don't have any continued interest specifically of him, so we're just kind of at this point

[00:16:29] Speaker 04:
Susposing that well bringing in the record that indicates that they would be after him because he left the area.

[00:16:35] Speaker 04:
I don't believe so your honor I mean again when he did leave the area he didn't there was no further contact there was no further contact of his family who remained in the area during that period of time that there was some point at some point he was confronted about where he was from.

[00:16:49] Speaker 04:
There wasn't like there wasn't in conjunction with any kind of claim It was that when he was in Juarez and again when he was on his way to Tijuana people could recognize his accent But there was no indication that he that those individuals were seeking to harm him based on any kind of Reason or let alone subject him to torture.

[00:17:08] Speaker 01:
He was recognized as coming for me to a gun

[00:17:11] Speaker 04:
that his accent suggested he was from that area.

[00:17:14] Speaker 04:
But that kind of brings me to the asylum and withholding context is that when we're looking at the nexus to a particular social group in this case, we're looking at the entirety of the social group.

[00:17:25] Speaker 04:
So even if the individual could be recognized potentially as someone from that region, that doesn't really provide much evidence that able-bodied males from La Rwanda who are unable to leave is viewed as a socially distinct group.

[00:17:40] Speaker 04:
The petitioner

[00:17:41] Speaker 04:
The arguments are essentially more from the perspective of the persecutor or reasonings why he might be recognized as an individual of that group.

[00:17:49] Speaker 04:
It doesn't really go towards whether or not the group itself is viewed as socially distinct.

[00:17:54] Speaker 01:
Is your position of the proposed PSG is not a proper PSG?

[00:18:01] Speaker 04:
That it is not cognizable because it's not and it's not socially distinct.

[00:18:05] Speaker 04:
The immutability of it, it goes to the petitioners focused heavily on this inability to leave, which is undermined, I think, most clearly on the fact that he did leave.

[00:18:17] Speaker 04:
He was able to take a bus.

[00:18:19] Speaker 04:
He got around the barricades, went through the checkpoints, went to Juarez where he would live for three or four months without incident.

[00:18:25] Speaker 04:
His family got on a bus, left Miocan, got around the barricades, went through the checkpoints.

[00:18:32] Speaker 03:
That sounds plausible.

[00:18:33] Speaker 03:
I mean, was that a ground for the agency decision though?

[00:18:37] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:18:38] Speaker 04:
The board found that it was not immutable because the trait unable to leave was not immutable because your location is not something that's set in stone.

[00:18:47] Speaker 04:
And then they also cited the ARCG, I believe, which dealt with unable to leave as being an aspect.

[00:18:54] Speaker 04:
The board also noted that it was distinct from ARCG, which has since been overruled.

[00:18:58] Speaker 04:
But because in that case, the inability to leave may have been

[00:19:04] Speaker 04:
contain elements of societal or cultural prohibitions against leaving your spouse if it's an abusive relationship, whereas here we have kind of these physical barricades themselves.

[00:19:15] Speaker 04:
And the petitioner.

[00:19:15] Speaker 03:
Does the law stand on inability to leave and whether that is essentially a circular, you know, group based on the harm or whether you can actually define the group in that way?

[00:19:26] Speaker 04:
Well, Diaz Reynoso came out and Judge Brez, I mean, it's probably unsurprising that I believe that the dissent in that case had the better argument there.

[00:19:34] Speaker 03:
No, I know, but my view didn't carry the day on that, but there's been things that happened since then, at least at the agency level.

[00:19:39] Speaker 04:
So it's come full circle.

[00:19:42] Speaker 04:
a B was the case the predated Diaz Rio no so and there's been kind of a you know tennis match between the agency for the last several years, but as of 926 this morning a B is back in good good order a matter of S.A.F.S.

[00:19:57] Speaker 04:
came out in September and they reinstated matter of a B one overruled a R.C.G.

[00:20:01] Speaker 04:
against were kind of back where we were.

[00:20:04] Speaker 04:
At least for now, in that sense.

[00:20:06] Speaker 03:
Has that been the subject of any further circuit precedent?

[00:20:11] Speaker 04:
No.

[00:20:12] Speaker 04:
So the last circuit precedent was when AB 3 came out, and that withdrew the previous ones because at that time there was a plan to make some kind of regulations which would have addressed the issue specifically.

[00:20:23] Speaker 04:
That never happened, so that's why a matter of SAFS came through to kind of reinstate back to where it was.

[00:20:30] Speaker 04:
Whether or not there's any room here to distinguish Diaz-Reyonoso, I think that in this case this kind of illustrates the difficulties because the petitioner has made the inability to leave kind of the core principle of this particular social group.

[00:20:44] Speaker 04:
So to kind of excise that and then at least for circularity analyze a different group.

[00:20:48] Speaker 04:
It is kind of problematic.

[00:20:50] Speaker 04:
And there was also the aspect of Diaz-Reyono where they remanded because it wasn't clear whether the inability to leave was based on persecution or whether it could have been based on the cultural or societal issues.

[00:21:03] Speaker 04:
Whereas in this case, it seems pretty clearly tied to the persecution.

[00:21:06] Speaker 04:
The petitioner says, oh, well, you know, it's difficult to sell your business or to sell your house, but those are not cultural prohibitions.

[00:21:13] Speaker 04:
Those are just personal difficulties you may have been doing something.

[00:21:16] Speaker 04:
So I think that there may be some room

[00:21:18] Speaker 04:
to nuance a little bit of a distinction, but with Diaz-Rionoso, but even if not, even if you put the circulatory issue to the side, I believe that the immutability and the social distinction issues are sufficient to deny the applications for asylum and withholding.

[00:21:33] Speaker 03:
Okay, we'll let you go a little over.

[00:21:35] Speaker 03:
Let me see if colleagues have other questions.

[00:21:37] Speaker 03:
No.

[00:21:37] Speaker 03:
Okay, let's hear rebuttal.

[00:21:38] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:21:44] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:21:44] Speaker 00:
Thank you for the extra time.

[00:21:46] Speaker 00:
First, Your Honor, I do want to address some points on the record.

[00:21:50] Speaker 00:
First, on page 127, the petitioner did testify that his friends were tortured when they didn't oblige by the outer defenses.

[00:22:01] Speaker 00:
The question here is, Andrade here is precise about what the agency has to do.

[00:22:07] Speaker 00:
It has to address evidence when it comes to the likelihood of torture.

[00:22:11] Speaker 00:
And so pointing directly to the court as to where it missed that, AR-275 talks about the expansion of the auto defenses, the government defense, the government force that at the time was in 13 out of 32 states.

[00:22:25] Speaker 00:
317 talked about the torture of individuals by the after defense us for people who they thought even might be against them, let alone that they were against them.

[00:22:38] Speaker 00:
And I believe in page 150, this is important,

[00:22:42] Speaker 00:
The petitioner testified that the community knew that he left the area and saw asylum in the United States.

[00:22:50] Speaker 00:
And his concern that if he returned, that is now a bigger part of the problem, a bigger part of the equation.

[00:22:58] Speaker 00:
So when we're looking at what evidence is there on the likelihood of torture, instead of reweighing the evidence, the court could say, did the agency really abide by Andrade in doing all that in the CAD context?

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
and then decide that it did not, and then go ahead and remand it over.

[00:23:14] Speaker 00:
In the last 30 seconds, just the one thing I would say about the rebuttal and the unable to leave, the ping-pong back and forth right now as it stands is that it's not prohibited.

[00:23:22] Speaker 00:
ARCG recognized it, but as the ping-pong back and forth, it goes back to looking at it on a case-by-case basis.

[00:23:30] Speaker 00:
And the unable to leave here is structural.

[00:23:32] Speaker 00:
And so, extraordinary evasion, his ability to leave in the middle of the night and stay in one place for a minimal amount of time before he got his family out there, doesn't prevent the structure of what happened there.

[00:23:47] Speaker 00:
Certainly as the country condition reports indicate, there were people coming in and out of that area who were other government officials and things like that.

[00:23:54] Speaker 00:
They were able to leave.

[00:23:55] Speaker 00:
They were not the ones that targeted.

[00:23:57] Speaker 00:
The Outdoor Defense has set the roadblocks first, set the conditions of being unable to leave this place, and then based on that, went in and targeted the specific individuals.

[00:24:07] Speaker 00:
So thank you, Your Honor, and we request that you grant the petition.

[00:24:11] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:24:12] Speaker 03:
We thank both counsel for the briefing and argument.

[00:24:14] Speaker 03:
This case is submitted.