NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAY 6 2021 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT HUGO MARTINEZ-DAVALOS, No. 19-70731 Petitioner, Agency No. A092-232-127 v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted April 12, 2021 Pasadena, California Before: PAEZ and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges, and KORMAN,** District Judge. This case has a complicated procedural history with which the parties are familiar, and we repeat it only as necessary. Petitioner is a native and citizen of Mexico seeking deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). While living in the United States as a lawful permanent resident, petitioner was * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Edward R. Korman, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. 1 convicted of an aggravated felony and became an informant for state and federal law enforcement agencies. Petitioner feared retaliation and fled the country for Mexicali, Mexico. There, two men took his money and United States permanent resident card. Locals told petitioner the two men were police officers. At subsequent encounters the men held a knife and gun to petitioner’s stomach while asking him to work for them, but they did not tell him what they planned to do if he refused. Petitioner fled to the United States and claimed CAT protection, but he was removed to Mexico after the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) reversed an Immigration Judge’s (IJ) holding in his favor. Petitioner moved to the town of San Quintín, Mexico on the advice of a man named Adan Romo. At one point, petitioner used the computer at a Romo-owned hotel to look up the number for an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which he believed Romo later discovered. Petitioner learned that Romo was a drug trafficker and was looking for someone to blame for the loss of a shipment. Romo showed petitioner violent movies, which petitioner took as a threat. Petitioner believed he was being followed and left town, eventually fleeing back to the United States. On remand from this Court, Martinez-Davalos v. Lynch, 669 F. App’x 489, 491 (9th Cir. 2016), the IJ found that petitioner failed to establish past torture or a sufficient likelihood of future torture, and the BIA affirmed. This petition for review followed. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 2 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1), and we deny the petition. To qualify for CAT protection, petitioner must show “both a greater than 50 percent likelihood that he will be tortured and that a public official would inflict, instigate, consent to or acquiesce in that torture.” Madrigal v. Holder, 716 F.3d 499, 508 (9th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted); see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(1). “Torture is an extreme form of cruel and inhuman treatment” that includes “prolonged mental harm …
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