NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604 Argued June 7, 2022 Decided July 6, 2022 Before DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge No. 21-1511 MARIA SIMON-ANTONIO and Petition for Review of an Order of the R.M.M.S., Board of Immigration Appeals. Petitioners, Nos. A208-539-170 & v. A208-539-171 MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ORDER Maria Simon-Antonio and her minor daughter R.M.M.S., both Guatemalan citizens, petition for review of the denial of their applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. (The daughter’s applications are derivative of her mother’s.) Simon-Antonio sought relief primarily on the basis that she was harmed and threatened in Guatemala by the men who she believes murdered her father. Because substantial evidence supports the immigration judge’s decision that Simon-Antonio failed to establish a nexus between any harm and a protected category, we deny the petition for review. No. 21-1511 Page 2 Simon-Antonio and her daughter entered the United States without documentation in 2015, leading the Department of Homeland Security to initiate removal proceedings against both. Although conceding removability, Simon-Antonio applied for asylum and withholding of removal, arguing that she had been persecuted in Guatemala and had well-founded fears of future persecution should she return. She attributed this persecution to three grounds: (1) her membership in a particular social group (the relatives of her deceased father); (2) her imputed political opinion (support of the Guatemalan military, in which her father served); and (3) her Mayan Kanjobal ethnicity. In addition, Simon-Antonio sought protection under the Convention Against Torture on the basis that she had been subject to threats of rape. At a hearing before an immigration judge, Simon-Antonio testified that she feared returning to her home, a rural and impoverished indigenous village in Guatemala. Her father was murdered there in 2002, and although the murder was never investigated, Simon-Antonio and her mother believe that it related to her father’s service in the Guatemalan military. Simon-Antonio also testified about more recent threats towards her, which she regarded as sufficiently credible, imminent, and severe to amount to persecution. She recounted, for instance, a 2015 episode in which two male strangers began to follow her around her village. Although the men never spoke to her, she believed that they killed her father or were connected to those who did. And Simon-Antonio further described how she was accosted during a trip to the market that year by men who she believed were gang members (like those, she suspects, who killed her father). She could not fully understand their Spanish, but heard the word “rape,” which she perceived to be a threat towards her. Simon-Antonio, who is Kanjobal (an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala), also sought asylum based on persecution in the form of severe economic deprivation. Indigenous communities like the Kanjobal have long experienced discrimination in Guatemala. …
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