[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
All right, each side has 15 minutes.

[00:00:02] Speaker 04:
Good morning.

[00:00:05] Speaker 01:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the court.

[00:00:08] Speaker 01:
My name is Miguel Martinez on behalf of the petitioners, Laura Patricia Sanchez Cacho and her two children.

[00:00:19] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, this court should grant this petition for review.

[00:00:24] Speaker 01:
In this case, the petitioner was subject to acts of persecution since she was a young woman.

[00:00:31] Speaker 01:
The agency agreed in that the petitioner suffered harm that amounted to persecution.

[00:00:42] Speaker 01:
However, the agency erred in finding that it was not on account of a protected ground.

[00:00:52] Speaker 01:
Our position is that the respondent, the petitioner in this case, was persecuted on account of her gender

[00:01:00] Speaker 01:
Primarily and on account of her membership and the witness based groups that we Set forth in our brief.

[00:01:08] Speaker 04:
Well, so you contend several social groups here, correct?

[00:01:12] Speaker 04:
How many total?

[00:01:14] Speaker 01:
I believe eight total that's pretty significant.

[00:01:18] Speaker 04:
I mean usually so To me your closest one might be the witness

[00:01:27] Speaker 04:
But after a review of the case law on social distinctness, including Enrique's Rivas, it appears that a petitioner's specific evidence of distinctness is very important.

[00:01:42] Speaker 04:
So could you explain how petitioners' article on witness protection, as well as her article related to the bloggers, supports her proposed, quote, criminal witness, unquote, social groups?

[00:01:57] Speaker 01:
Well, Your Honors, this court has found that the society at large needs to recognize a group.

[00:02:06] Speaker 01:
And in Enrique's Rivas, it did so also based on a local law in El Salvador which protected witnesses.

[00:02:15] Speaker 01:
In this case, Mexico has a similar law.

[00:02:18] Speaker 01:
Also, there is

[00:02:20] Speaker 01:
the article about individuals who share information about the cartels.

[00:02:26] Speaker 04:
Well, there isn't a specific case that recognizes what your client's asking us to recognize, correct?

[00:02:33] Speaker 01:
May you repeat the question, Your Honor?

[00:02:35] Speaker 04:
Well, is there a specific case out there that recognizes, quote, criminal witness social groups?

[00:02:43] Speaker 01:
Criminal witness social groups?

[00:02:45] Speaker 04:
Well, that's what you're asking us to recognize as one of her social groups, right?

[00:02:50] Speaker 01:
Yes, but there are several groups.

[00:02:57] Speaker 01:
But may I shift the focus primarily to the gender-based part of our argument?

[00:03:03] Speaker 04:
Well, you can talk about that later, but now you have to talk about what I want to talk about.

[00:03:07] Speaker 01:
OK.

[00:03:09] Speaker 01:
There hasn't been a case.

[00:03:10] Speaker 01:
Enriquez Rivas treated that issue.

[00:03:16] Speaker 01:
And he talked about the fact that

[00:03:18] Speaker 01:
that specific applicant for asylum was a witness, a testimonial witness in the case.

[00:03:27] Speaker 01:
But Enrique Sribas does not impose a categorical rule on being a testimonial witness in order to benefit from a witness type of particular social group.

[00:03:38] Speaker 04:
Okay, so you propose like eight groups.

[00:03:40] Speaker 04:
But three of the social groups are related to criminal witnesses alone.

[00:03:46] Speaker 04:
As we sort through them, which of these criminal witness groups do you believe is the best fit or provides the strongest position for your client?

[00:03:58] Speaker 01:
The one that, in my view, Your Honor, the one that best fits the circumstances is Mexican.

[00:04:08] Speaker 01:
witnesses to serious cartel crimes who do not report crimes to law enforcement, whose identities are known to the cartel.

[00:04:16] Speaker 02:
So as I understand the agency's findings, the immigration judge considered

[00:04:28] Speaker 02:
Respondent did not testify against the cartel or provide the police with a statement.

[00:04:31] Speaker 02:
So as you say, it is the definition of simply people who have not simply but people who are threatened because they are have been witness to cartel crime and are known to the cartel.

[00:04:43] Speaker 02:
But the evidence in the record that the agency was given to deal with were two articles in part, there may be more, but one dealt with the witness protection program.

[00:04:55] Speaker 02:
And I think as we've explored, it's undisputed that this petitioner was not a member of the witness protection program.

[00:05:03] Speaker 02:
And then the second were the bloggers, the violence against people who were

[00:05:09] Speaker 02:
perceived to have reported the crimes.

[00:05:14] Speaker 02:
So haven't reported to the police and haven't reported publicly.

[00:05:20] Speaker 02:
So how do either of those compel us to find that that is a particular social group?

[00:05:27] Speaker 02:
Or am I missing some other piece of evidence that should be doing the work of compelling us to find differently than the agency?

[00:05:32] Speaker 01:
I believe there's an additional piece of evidence and that's contained in the

[00:05:36] Speaker 01:
petitioners declaration before the agency which was given full evidentiary weight as well where she recounts an incident where she Encountered two corpses with signs stabbed to their chests Saying that this is what happens when you talk about us or something along those lines again is she is the position here that she's talked about the cartel to anyone and

[00:06:03] Speaker 01:
The position is the perception, not that she actually talked to the police or not that she actually talked to law enforcement.

[00:06:11] Speaker 01:
It's the fact that she witnessed the murder.

[00:06:16] Speaker 02:
But are any of the examples that you've provided so far

[00:06:20] Speaker 02:
persecution of people on the basis of a perception.

[00:06:23] Speaker 02:
So far all of these examples seem to be people who have actually reported the crime and I think that the difference between the group that you're proposing and the difference that we've recognized elsewhere and that the

[00:06:37] Speaker 02:
record has is that there's been a report.

[00:06:40] Speaker 02:
And so none of those involve the perception piece.

[00:06:46] Speaker 02:
Where in the record compels us to find that extra piece, which I think is important to your claim?

[00:06:50] Speaker 01:
Because the cartel saw the prosecutors going to her house and they confronted her about it.

[00:06:57] Speaker 01:
And that created the perception that she had some type of ongoing communication with the... So it was as good as she reported.

[00:07:03] Speaker 03:
Could we talk about the blogger article for a moment?

[00:07:09] Speaker 03:
In that article, do we know whether the individuals who were killed were actually the ones who had done the blog post or reported to the blog?

[00:07:22] Speaker 01:
According to the article,

[00:07:26] Speaker 01:
My understanding is that it was.

[00:07:29] Speaker 01:
But again, it's the societal perception as far as someone who has information that is incriminating, it can be a witness.

[00:07:38] Speaker 01:
And it's also the exposure that Henrique Srivas, kind of like it's established, that puts her in danger.

[00:07:47] Speaker 01:
Because the cartels, she's exposed to the cartels.

[00:07:50] Speaker 01:
Now that they are aware, they saw the prosecutors at her house.

[00:07:56] Speaker 01:
And the government might frame this as an extortion case, but the timing in this case is essential because the record establishes that she had a food business that she was running for years and years and years, five, six, seven years in a cartel-infested area.

[00:08:15] Speaker 01:
However, the cartel came knocking at her door after she witnessed the murder.

[00:08:23] Speaker 01:
The government's position that this is a money case, in my view, obviously is undermined by that major fact in the case of timing.

[00:08:36] Speaker 01:
When did the cartel come to her house?

[00:08:40] Speaker 01:
Was it about the money?

[00:08:41] Speaker 01:
And another very illustrative fact in the record is,

[00:08:46] Speaker 01:
The first encounter the first contacts with the cartel once they came knocking at her door.

[00:08:51] Speaker 01:
It wasn't about the money it wasn't about.

[00:08:54] Speaker 01:
Give me $5,000 to keep running your food stand they was.

[00:08:59] Speaker 01:
We saw you.

[00:09:00] Speaker 01:
We saw you witness the murder and we saw the prosecutors.

[00:09:05] Speaker 03:
So I thought in the blogger article that the issue there was that it wasn't known whether the folks who were killed had actually done the reports.

[00:09:19] Speaker 01:
Do I have that wrong?

[00:09:20] Speaker 04:
I would have to go but I don't have it off the top of my head your honor and yes my apologies for that but It against go back to the detective testified on that that it would be impossible to find out whether the victims actually posted anything online about the cartels so Maybe the article establishes that

[00:09:45] Speaker 04:
the society knows about victims is that they were suspected of reporting serious gangs?

[00:09:51] Speaker 01:
It's all about the perception, the perception you are correct, Your Honor.

[00:09:55] Speaker 04:
And that's, that's where we're trying to... So I'm going to ask your friend on the other side about that is whether if that stands for the proposition that doesn't, does the blogger situation, you know, mirror petitioner's social group where she's saying, quote,

[00:10:12] Speaker 04:
Mexican witnesses who are suspected of reporting serious gang crimes to law enforcement.

[00:10:20] Speaker 01:
That can be encapsulated also with witnesses, right?

[00:10:25] Speaker 01:
In my view, it's all about the perception.

[00:10:27] Speaker 01:
If you're a blogger or if you are suspected to have shared some type of content related to the cartels, even if... Well, why aren't those different?

[00:10:37] Speaker 02:
I mean, I guess there's no dispute that the victims discussed in the snitches article were bloggers.

[00:10:44] Speaker 02:
The question is whether they had posted anything.

[00:10:47] Speaker 02:
About it whether they knew but of course if your job is to spread information Which is not the petitioners here.

[00:10:56] Speaker 02:
Is that a material difference?

[00:10:59] Speaker 01:
Sharing information can can be in different forms right sharing information can be revealing incriminating facts to the community at large via social media blog or it can be

[00:11:14] Speaker 01:
revealing, incriminating information to law enforcement.

[00:11:17] Speaker 01:
It's more about the medium than anything else.

[00:11:21] Speaker 01:
But the important thing here about the Henrique Rivas holding is the exposure.

[00:11:26] Speaker 01:
Henrique Rivas did not impose a categorical rule about having to testify in open court in order to be able to claim legally a witness-based group.

[00:11:39] Speaker 01:
And the exposure was present in this case

[00:11:43] Speaker 01:
when she was confronted by the cartels.

[00:11:52] Speaker 01:
The next point I wanted to make was going back to the respond, the petitioners, sorry, I work in immigration court, so I have responded, stuck in my head.

[00:12:03] Speaker 01:
The petitioner's childhood, there are several accounts.

[00:12:07] Speaker 01:
There's actually three full pages in her declaration dedicated to

[00:12:11] Speaker 01:
the trauma she suffered in her early years, specifically at the hands of her father.

[00:12:18] Speaker 01:
In this type of trauma, the agency found that it amounts to the level of persecution.

[00:12:26] Speaker 01:
However, the agency stopped in their analysis when they said, well, this is not on a kind of a protected ground, but we disagree, it was, and the record is very clear on that.

[00:12:36] Speaker 01:
She grew up

[00:12:38] Speaker 01:
Petitioner grew up in a household where it was okay.

[00:12:42] Speaker 01:
It was tolerated to abuse women.

[00:12:46] Speaker 01:
Her mother, there's accounts in the record about her mother being beaten to the point of unconsciousness in that household.

[00:12:53] Speaker 01:
There's accounts in the record of the petitioner's brother beating his mother and assaulting her with a knife because the brother suspected that the mom was being unfaithful to the father.

[00:13:09] Speaker 01:
there are accounts in the record of the petitioner's sister being raped in that same community.

[00:13:18] Speaker 01:
But the more precise point I want to make is that the petitioner was sexually, that her father tried to sexually assault her, and she states in her psychological evaluation that she felt as if her father didn't look at her as a daughter,

[00:13:37] Speaker 01:
but looked at her as a woman.

[00:13:40] Speaker 01:
And that is supported by other facts in the record.

[00:13:42] Speaker 01:
For example, the fact that the father tried to make sexual advances towards her.

[00:13:49] Speaker 01:
And the broader point I want to make is you might be asking, well, counsel, how does that serve the case, right?

[00:13:58] Speaker 01:
What do we do with that?

[00:13:59] Speaker 01:
It happened way back 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

[00:14:02] Speaker 01:
Well, if the court agrees with our position,

[00:14:07] Speaker 01:
That would constitute past persecution on account of gender, specifically Mexican women.

[00:14:12] Speaker 01:
And that will open up the door for the petitioner to seek humanitarian asylum for the agency, which is a form of relief that was denied.

[00:14:22] Speaker 01:
Not denied, but the immigration judge did not get to that part because past persecution was not established on account of a protected ground.

[00:14:33] Speaker 01:
And my time is running out, so I reserve the balance.

[00:14:38] Speaker 04:
I don't think we have any additional questions, so I'll give you two minutes for a rebuttal.

[00:14:42] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:14:56] Speaker 04:
Good morning.

[00:14:58] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:14:59] Speaker 00:
May it please the Court?

[00:15:00] Speaker 00:
My name is Kosei Ugumori, and I represent the United States Attorney General in this case.

[00:15:05] Speaker 00:
The court should deny this petition for review.

[00:15:07] Speaker 00:
This case is about extortion.

[00:15:09] Speaker 00:
It's not about persecution on account of a cognizable protected ground.

[00:15:12] Speaker 00:
It's not about torture.

[00:15:13] Speaker 00:
The petitioner raises a litany of claims, but she cannot change the baseline facts of this case, which is that she was the unfortunate victim of an extortion.

[00:15:22] Speaker 00:
An extortion by itself is not a basis for asylum, withholding, or cap protection.

[00:15:27] Speaker 00:
And to the extent the petitioner alleges abuse as a child, the evidence is not compelled to conclusion.

[00:15:33] Speaker 00:
that she suffered past persecution on account of a protected ground, and she has never raised a separate claim of future persecution based on the abuse.

[00:15:41] Speaker 03:
So in terms of the proposed criminal witness group, or criminal witness social groups, I think it's true that the articles are not a perfect match with this case.

[00:15:54] Speaker 03:
But if you take them at a high enough level of generality, they do seem to suggest that Mexican society recognizes people who are

[00:16:02] Speaker 03:
identified as cooperating with law enforcement, whether or not they actually testify in court.

[00:16:08] Speaker 03:
So why wasn't that overlooked, improperly overlooked below?

[00:16:14] Speaker 00:
I do not think any evidence was overlooked, and that's not the petitioner's claim.

[00:16:18] Speaker 00:
But yes, at some level of generality.

[00:16:21] Speaker 03:
Disregarded, I should say.

[00:16:23] Speaker 03:
Go ahead.

[00:16:24] Speaker 00:
Well, the question before this court is whether there is evidence that compels the conclusion.

[00:16:31] Speaker 00:
that Mexican society views these three or one of the alleged witness-based social groups as distinct in their society.

[00:16:40] Speaker 00:
So that's the question.

[00:16:41] Speaker 00:
First and foremost, review is not de novo.

[00:16:44] Speaker 00:
Review is for substantial evidence.

[00:16:46] Speaker 04:
And the question seems like that she alleges admittedly one of the largest number of social groups that I've I've been doing immigration cases for a long time.

[00:16:55] Speaker 04:
I mean, she threw every social group against the kitchen sink and what stinks.

[00:17:00] Speaker 04:
what, see what sticks.

[00:17:02] Speaker 04:
But it seems like common sense maybe that people who know too much are a group recognized by any society.

[00:17:11] Speaker 04:
So should we be taking, you know, that's, it's, is there enough here?

[00:17:17] Speaker 04:
And if so, did the district court deal with that social group?

[00:17:23] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:17:23] Speaker 00:
Well, so the court specifically addressed the blogger article, the Times article.

[00:17:28] Speaker 00:
and considered the evidence in the record and found that Mexican society did not view witnesses of crimes as a distinct group.

[00:17:41] Speaker 00:
And that would be consistent with this court's case law as well.

[00:17:45] Speaker 00:
It's not necessarily the case that somebody who is out and public about being a witness is always going to be a social group.

[00:17:53] Speaker 00:
For example, in Hernandez Ruiz, there

[00:17:55] Speaker 00:
Of course, there was support that somebody who testifies in open court may be socially distinct in that society.

[00:18:02] Speaker 00:
But it was because there was laws protecting witnesses.

[00:18:06] Speaker 00:
And so if there's a law protecting a witness, then clearly that society views that group of people as discrete.

[00:18:14] Speaker 00:
So it's not just that somebody is open.

[00:18:16] Speaker 00:
There has to be laws and policies.

[00:18:18] Speaker 00:
As this court has said, for example, in D.S.

[00:18:20] Speaker 00:
Torres versus Barr in 2020, in order to determine social distinction,

[00:18:25] Speaker 00:
You look to country reports, you look to expert reports, you look to press accounts of policies of discrimination and laws and policies or historical animosity.

[00:18:41] Speaker 03:
But here we have two press accounts that demonstrate some animosity against people who are suspected of having

[00:18:50] Speaker 03:
cooperated.

[00:18:50] Speaker 03:
I mean, we know from our prior case law that testimony in court is not required.

[00:18:57] Speaker 03:
So I guess, again, why aren't these articles enough?

[00:19:00] Speaker 03:
It seems like the BIA dismissed the claim that these could be substantially distinct social groups by just saying, well, there was no testimony in court.

[00:19:09] Speaker 03:
But I think that that was wrong.

[00:19:12] Speaker 03:
That's not the standard.

[00:19:15] Speaker 03:
So go ahead.

[00:19:16] Speaker 00:
Well, first and foremost, the board adopted and affirmed the immigration judge's decision.

[00:19:19] Speaker 00:
which means the immigration judge's analysis is also before the court.

[00:19:23] Speaker 00:
And the immigration judge specifically addressed the evidence, specifically noted that the petitioner in this case did not testify.

[00:19:31] Speaker 00:
She's not a blogger.

[00:19:32] Speaker 00:
She's not a journalist.

[00:19:33] Speaker 00:
She's not part of the witness protection program.

[00:19:36] Speaker 00:
And so that evidence simply was not enough to establish social distinction.

[00:19:40] Speaker 00:
And second of all, the board was responding to the petitioner's arguments on appeal.

[00:19:44] Speaker 00:
What the petitioner was arguing was, well, you know, because I'm a witness under Ninth Circuit law, that's enough.

[00:19:50] Speaker 00:
And the board said that's not the case, that it's a case-by-case, evidence-based approach, and this court has confirmed that.

[00:19:58] Speaker 00:
in many cases, including in Torres Dias and also Conde Quevedo versus Barr, where this court said that social distinction is reviewed for substantial evidence and that there are no categorical rulings with respect to social distinction because it has to be based on the evidence in the record.

[00:20:20] Speaker 02:
Why should it matter whether she did report or was perceived to report when the perception is the very thing that makes it socially distinct?

[00:20:34] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:20:35] Speaker 00:
So the question is not only whether she is viewable, whether she did enough to, I suppose, expose herself.

[00:20:45] Speaker 00:
But the real question is, does Mexican society view those persons as a discrete group or a faction?

[00:20:51] Speaker 00:
or an other group that needs some kind of special protection.

[00:20:54] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:20:55] Speaker 02:
I mean, if you, maybe you don't agree, but let's assume that the articles establish that people who have reported cartel crimes to the police and are known by the cartel to have done so are a PSG.

[00:21:10] Speaker 02:
Just assume that.

[00:21:12] Speaker 02:
If that's the case,

[00:21:13] Speaker 02:
Why does whether that perception of the petitioner as being part of that group, false?

[00:21:23] Speaker 02:
Why should that matter for a PSG analysis?

[00:21:27] Speaker 00:
So if I understand your question correctly, if the evidence established that witnesses to crimes are- Who have reported.

[00:21:34] Speaker 00:
Okay.

[00:21:35] Speaker 02:
Right, the only difference between witnesses to crimes who have reported them

[00:21:41] Speaker 02:
and petitioner is that she didn't, but she's saying she was perceived to.

[00:21:45] Speaker 02:
So in the eyes of the cartel, and arguably society in general, there's no difference.

[00:21:53] Speaker 00:
Well, so I'm trying not to change your hypothetically, Arnold, but I think.

[00:22:01] Speaker 02:
I'm used to it.

[00:22:03] Speaker 00:
Well, I would not want to, so please correct me if my answer is going off rails here.

[00:22:09] Speaker 00:
Again, the question is Mexican society's views, not the persecutor's views.

[00:22:14] Speaker 00:
So it actually doesn't matter how the persecutor views the individual, except to the extent it reflects society's views.

[00:22:21] Speaker 02:
So there's some, I think, somewhere in the record, and maybe your friend can help me pinpoint it, discussion that, you know, in small towns, word goes around, people talk.

[00:22:34] Speaker 02:
So it's more than just the cartel, I think is the argument here, it's more than just the cartel that perceives her as reporting the crime, it's her community.

[00:22:45] Speaker 02:
And the community includes the cartel, but the community, why isn't community society?

[00:22:50] Speaker 00:
So I think I understand your question now.

[00:22:53] Speaker 00:
So first and foremost, there are two parts.

[00:22:56] Speaker 00:
One is that the immigration judge found that it was Mexican society.

[00:23:00] Speaker 00:
That's the relevant society.

[00:23:01] Speaker 00:
And that's never been challenged before.

[00:23:03] Speaker 00:
So the lens with which the analysis has to be from Mexican society.

[00:23:09] Speaker 00:
So does Mexican society view witnesses as a socially distinct group?

[00:23:15] Speaker 00:
So that's the first part.

[00:23:17] Speaker 00:
We wouldn't apply the community in Apazingan, for example, here, because the immigration judge used Mexican society.

[00:23:23] Speaker 00:
That's the society that is before this court now.

[00:23:26] Speaker 00:
The second part of that is just because somebody can be seen doesn't mean they are viewed as a group.

[00:23:32] Speaker 00:
So social distinction means that the group is a faction or some historically oppressed group, for example.

[00:23:43] Speaker 00:
Those are the clearest examples of social distinction.

[00:23:46] Speaker 00:
It's not that anybody who appears to draw attention to themselves is a socially distinct group.

[00:23:55] Speaker 00:
And this is why it's important to have country conditions evidence in the record to establish what Mexican society or how Mexican society might view

[00:24:05] Speaker 00:
a proposed particular social group.

[00:24:07] Speaker 00:
And the petitioner attempted to do that here.

[00:24:09] Speaker 00:
They did submit country conditions evidence, the immigration judge considered it, and it just wasn't enough.

[00:24:15] Speaker 00:
And this court, when reviewing that record, has to find that there are no other reasonable way to look at it in order to reverse.

[00:24:23] Speaker 02:
I mean, I guess, Enrique's kind of is the inverse of this case, where the error that we assigned there was that the person did testify

[00:24:33] Speaker 02:
and the agency erred in saying that, but they weren't known to testify.

[00:24:38] Speaker 02:
And so we've got kind of the reverse here in that they didn't testify, but they are suspected of at least reporting.

[00:24:47] Speaker 02:
But, you know, I guess does that make a difference?

[00:24:51] Speaker 00:
Well, in this case, it makes a difference, but not in the petitioner's favor, because it's even less compelling than in Hernandez Rivas.

[00:25:00] Speaker 00:
The petitioner didn't testify.

[00:25:02] Speaker 00:
She didn't cooperate.

[00:25:03] Speaker 00:
In fact, you know, the gang never really actually made a threat with respect to her being a witness.

[00:25:11] Speaker 00:
She came to the attention of the gang because she had witnessed.

[00:25:15] Speaker 00:
But after that, it's all about extortion.

[00:25:18] Speaker 00:
They only want money.

[00:25:19] Speaker 00:
She even testifies, you know, they wouldn't have extorted me if I didn't run a business or didn't have ready access to funds.

[00:25:25] Speaker 00:
When they initially extorted her, it was about

[00:25:28] Speaker 00:
Well, if you want to continue your food stand, you have to pay us.

[00:25:32] Speaker 00:
So the gang itself actually never treated her adversely because of this being a witness.

[00:25:42] Speaker 00:
And I think that's why the board noted tangentially in its decision not only the cognizability aspect of it, but also the nexus aspect of it, that a personal dispute is not enough to establish persecution on account of a protected ground.

[00:25:56] Speaker 00:
And that's really what we have here.

[00:25:58] Speaker 00:
The gang is targeting the petitioner not because of her status as a member of a group, but only because she came to their attention after having witnessed the unfortunate event of the murder of the neighbor.

[00:26:14] Speaker 00:
So again, I think it's important to know what this case is really about.

[00:26:18] Speaker 00:
It's about extortion.

[00:26:22] Speaker 00:
came to the attention of the gang, and then was extorted.

[00:26:24] Speaker 00:
That's not a basis for asylum.

[00:26:26] Speaker 00:
Most of these particular social groups that the petitioner alleges, including the political opinion ground, which would make nine separate grounds for relief and protection here, most of those grounds, I would say eight maybe.

[00:26:40] Speaker 00:
Well, if you exclude the witnesses, it would be six.

[00:26:43] Speaker 00:
The petitioner actually never even said that during the testimony.

[00:26:46] Speaker 00:
She didn't say during the testimony, well, why were you targeted?

[00:26:50] Speaker 00:
She didn't say, well, because I am a female small business owner who opposed the gang.

[00:26:55] Speaker 00:
She didn't say that.

[00:26:56] Speaker 00:
She didn't say it's because of my gender or my nationality.

[00:27:01] Speaker 00:
She didn't say it was because of her family or her political opinion.

[00:27:04] Speaker 00:
These are all arguments by counsel.

[00:27:09] Speaker 00:
And it's not based on the facts.

[00:27:11] Speaker 00:
And so there is certainly no compelling evidence in this case that would establish a nexus or cognizability, really, to any of the petitioners.

[00:27:24] Speaker 00:
The baseline facts of the case wouldn't support any of those claims, Your Honor.

[00:27:28] Speaker 00:
And with respect to the petitioner's arguments about the agency didn't reach nexus on the witness piece, right?

[00:27:36] Speaker 00:
Well, the government believes it did.

[00:27:40] Speaker 00:
The immigration judge found that six of the nine grounds were denied, not just on cognizability, but also on Nexus.

[00:27:51] Speaker 02:
But the one we've been spending most of our time talking about, you're not contending that it reached Nexus on the perceived witness to criminal activity.

[00:28:00] Speaker 00:
The board did note in its decision not only cognizability, but that personal disputes is not persecution on account of a protected ground.

[00:28:08] Speaker 00:
So that may constitute nexus.

[00:28:10] Speaker 00:
But it's not necessary for this court to dispose of the entire case just on nexus, because cognizability resolves the witness grounds.

[00:28:17] Speaker 00:
And a combination of cognizability and nexus would resolve the other claims as well.

[00:28:24] Speaker 00:
So if Your Honors have no further questions, the government asks that the petition for review be denied.

[00:28:30] Speaker 00:
Thank you very much.

[00:28:42] Speaker 01:
Your Honors, two quick points on the perception.

[00:28:47] Speaker 01:
This circuit has case law that establishes that

[00:28:53] Speaker 01:
Recognizability or social distinction is the proper term does not have to occur at the national level it can be even at the regional level and in this case has sufficient evidence to support that the proposed groups are recognizable at the very least at the regional level and the was that part of the group that the They're the respondent put before the agency a subnational group

[00:29:23] Speaker 01:
No, I'm just speaking about in general terms how the cognizability factor is analyzed.

[00:29:32] Speaker 02:
Yeah, I'm just wondering whether we can reach it if what the agency was asked to consider was a national group.

[00:29:38] Speaker 01:
It's not worded at a regional level in terms of Michoacan, but it's worded in terms of Mexican, but the circumstances and her environment

[00:29:48] Speaker 01:
Specifically, the piece of evidence I mentioned in her declaration where she encountered two bodies stabbed with the sign in a public plaza displaying signs that said, this is what happens when you talk too much or something along those lines.

[00:30:01] Speaker 01:
It's very illustrative that they were putting out this message to that community, to that region, to that specific community that this is what happens when you witness something and you come forward with it.

[00:30:18] Speaker 01:
Thank you for your time and the opportunity your honors I respectfully Requested the your honors grant the petition and remind the case for further proceedings Thank you both for your argument this matter will stand submitted