NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 21a0151n.06 No. 20-3631 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT SEGUNDO MIGUEL-JOSE, ) FILED ) Mar 23, 2021 Petitioner, ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) v. ) ON PETITION FOR REVIEW ) FROM THE UNITED STATES MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, ) BOARD OF IMMIGRATION ) APPEALS. Respondent. ) ) ) BEFORE: SUHRHEINRICH, SILER, and SUTTON, Circuit Judges. SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge. Segundo Miguel-Jose (“Miguel”) challenges the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision denying his applications for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture. Because substantial evidence supports the Board’s decision, we deny the petition for review. I. Miguel and his minor son Francisco, citizens of Guatemala, illegally entered the United States around December 1, 2015.1 The Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings against them. Miguel admitted the factual allegations and conceded his removability but applied for withholding of removal and Convention Against Torture protection.2 1 Francisco was included in Miguel’s proceedings below and was also ordered removed. He is not a petitioner before this court, however. 2 Miguel also admitted that his asylum application was untimely. No. 20-3631, Miguel-Jose v. Garland Miguel testified in support of his application. Prior to leaving Guatemala, Miguel lived with his wife and three children, ages eleven, six, and three at the time of the hearing, working as a farmer planting corn. AR 110, 143-44. Miguel stated that, from 2012 until 2015, gang members of the Mara 13 repeatedly threatened him because they wanted to recruit his oldest son, Leonardo, to transport drugs. Gangs like to use children as runners because they cannot be detained. AR 148-49, 151, 155. Miguel claimed that the gang threatened to kidnap his second child, Francisco, if he did not allow Leonardo to join the gang. AR 146. They came to the family’s home five or six times. AR 145, 150. They mocked Miguel for being indigenous (Mayan), AR 147, but never physically harmed anyone. AR 150. Miguel stated that he did not report any of these incidents because the police do not protect the people and are afraid of the gang members. AR 149. He claimed that, because they knew he had left Guatemala, if he returned the gang could kill him. AR 150. He felt that he could not live elsewhere in Guatemala because there are “gang members everywhere.” Id. Miguel identified two particular social groups giving rise to his persecution: his membership in a family “that is being targeted,” AR 162, and being “a witness to a crime,” AR 163-64. The immigration judge denied Miguel’s application. Although deeming Miguel credible, the immigration judge found that Miguel’s account “did not provide much in the way of detail concerning any of the specific events” or the number of incidents between 2012 and 2015. AR 64. The immigration judge found that Miguel’s corroborating evidence, which included reports on country conditions in Guatemala, a letter from his mother, who stated that the Mara 13 threatened her son “[m]any times,” AR …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals