NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAR 23 2022 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT HECTOR MARTINEZ, AKA Hector Samir No. 15-72614 Martinez, Agency No. A095-807-934 Petitioner, v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted March 10, 2022** Pasadena, California Before: TALLMAN and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and KORMAN,*** District Judge. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). *** The Honorable Edward R. Korman, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. Emir Esau Martinez,1 a native and citizen of Honduras, appeals from the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“Board”) decision affirming the denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We grant Martinez’s petition. In 2000, when Martinez was thirteen years old and living in Miramar, Honduras, he and his cousins Yimi and Victor witnessed national police officers killing four people in a soccer field. Two weeks after Martinez witnessed this crime, the police officers stopped him on his way to school, hit him with the butt of their rifles, and told him that if he said anything about what he had seen, they would kill him and his whole family. A few days later, national police officers shot Yimi to death in the street; Yimi was barely fourteen years old. Martinez and Victor fled Miramar with the rest of their family to live with Martinez’s aunt Glenis Munguia in La Isla, Honduras. For four years, the family lived openly in La Isla. In 2004, Martinez and his family returned to Miramar. Soon after, national police officers entered Martinez’s family’s house, looking for Martinez and Victor. The police officers found Victor, but Martinez was not home. The police officers beat Martinez’s aunt, but she refused to tell them Martinez’s location. The police officers took Victor and, a few days later, his body was discovered in the street 1 Petitioner’s birth name. 2 with several bullet entry wounds. Victor was only sixteen years old. Martinez fled to Aunt Glenis’s house in La Isla. He lived in hiding for two months—completing his schoolwork at home because he was too worried about being intercepted at school—until he could secure passage to the United States. Since Martinez moved to the United States, national police officers have repeatedly harassed his family members for his whereabouts. The sole basis for the agency’s denial of Martinez’s application for asylum and withholding of removal was that Martinez could reasonably relocate within Honduras because he had lived safely in La Isla in the past. The agency may deny asylum and withholding of removal if it finds by a preponderance of the evidence that “[t]he applicant could avoid future persecution …
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