NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 19a0336n.06 No. 18-3893 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jul 03, 2019 ALFREDO DAVID CASTRO-CASTANEDA, ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) Petitioner-Appellant, ) ) ON PETITION FOR REVIEW v. ) FROM THE UNITED STATES ) BOARD OF IMMIGRATION WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, ) APPEALS ) Respondent-Appellee. ) BEFORE: ROGERS, GRIFFIN, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges. ROGERS, Circuit Judge. Alfredo David Castro-Castaneda appeals the Board of Immigration Appeals’ denial of his application for humanitarian asylum, arguing that the Board erred in determining that he did not suffer past persecution based on a protected ground. Castro- Castaneda claims that he experienced persecution in his native country of El Salvador on account of his membership in a proposed particular social group—namely, “young Salvadoran men abandoned by their parents.” However, the proposed group is too amorphous to satisfy the “particularity” requirement for a particular social group, and Castro-Castaneda is accordingly not eligible for humanitarian asylum. Castro-Castaneda is a twenty-two-year-old native and citizen of El Salvador. Both of Castro-Castaneda’s parents immigrated to the United States when he was a young child, and Castro-Castaneda’s sisters raised him in El Salvador with the help of bi-monthly payments from his father. For most of his life, Castro-Castaneda lived safely in El Salvador. However, that No. 18-3893, Castro-Castaneda v. Barr changed in 2014 and 2015, when Castro-Castaneda allegedly experienced multiple threats and assaults at the hands of MS-13 gang members and police officers. The first incident occurred near the end of 2014. A member of MS-13 approached Castro- Castaneda and threatened to harm him if he continued to sport long hair and wear Nike tennis shoes, because the shoes apparently signaled that Castro-Castaneda “belonged to [MS-13] or [ ] was trying to belong to them.” Shortly afterwards, an MS-13 gang member known as “El Checo” assaulted Castro-Castaneda “without provocation.” The encounter left Castro-Castaneda “terrified,” but he did not report the attack to the police because he “wanted to forget what had happened.” A couple months later, in March of 2015, Castro-Castaneda was assaulted again near a government building. Although he was uncertain whether the attackers “were associated with the MS-13 member who threatened [him] in the park,” Castro-Castaneda “was wearing [his] Nike tennis shoes that day and at the time [he] thought that was why they were chasing [him].” Castro-Castaneda’s problems continued in October 2015, when “four men dressed as police officers” assaulted him and demanded information about El Checo and MS-13. The officers “accused [Castro-Castaneda] of being a member of the MS-13” gang, and they beat him before leaving him in the street. Castro-Castaneda attempted to file a report with El Salvador’s National Civil Police (“PNC”). However, officers at the police station told him that he needed a parent to be present before a report could be filed. Later that same month, a group of MS-13 members who claimed to be associates of El Checo confronted Castro-Castaneda while he was with his girlfriend in a park. They threatened ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals