In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 14-2828 RAUL PLAZA-RAMIREZ, Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A087-947-839. ____________________ ARGUED OCTOBER 3, 2018 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 7, 2018 ____________________ Before MANION, HAMILTON, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Raul Plaza-Ramirez is a citizen of Mexico. He petitions for judicial review of a Board of Immi- gration Appeals order denying his application for withhold- ing of removal based on a threat of persecution if he were to return to Mexico. The immigration judge denied relief, find- ing no nexus between Plaza-Ramirez’s membership in a “par- ticular social group” and the persecution he described. The 2 No. 14-2828 Board affirmed. We deny the petition because substantial ev- idence supports the judge’s and the Board’s decisions. I. Factual and Procedural Background In the summer of 2001, Raul Plaza-Ramirez entered the United States from Mexico without inspection or admission. He lived and worked in Naperville, Illinois for nearly a dec- ade. In 2010, he was traveling in upstate New York and was apprehended by Border Patrol agents. The government began the process of removing him from the United States. He con- ceded removability but applied for asylum, withholding of re- moval, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. Plaza-Ramirez based his persecution claim on an attack he suffered in 1999. He was at a dance club in his home town in central Mexico when he was followed into the restroom by members of a gang called Los Negros. Mistakenly thinking he was affiliated with his cousin’s rival gang, they viciously beat him with a metal pipe. Afterwards, they threatened him sev- eral times, but they did not physically attack him again. He fled the country nine months later. Afraid of retaliation, he never filed any police reports. To support his claim for withholding of removal, Plaza- Ramirez argued that he was targeted because he is a member of a particular social group: his own family. Essentially, he contends Los Negros attacked him solely because he is kin to his gang-affiliated cousin. In general, to qualify as a refugee under United States law, a person must be unable or unwill- ing to return to his own country “because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or polit- ical opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). No. 14-2828 3 Plaza-Ramirez argued that returning to Mexico continued to be dangerous for him. He asserted that his girlfriend’s sis- ter was kidnapped for ransom in his home town in 2010 by a member of Los Negros. (Police rescued her before she was physically injured.) The immigration judge denied relief. The asylum claim was untimely because Plaza-Ramirez did not apply until over a decade after his first year of entry. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(B). The judge rejected the withholding claim ...
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