UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-1617 ABNER VENTURA PEREZ-MORALES, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Argued: March 21, 2019 Decided: July 29, 2019 Before WYNN, DIAZ, and THACKER, Circuit Judges. Petition for review granted in part and case remanded by unpublished opinion. Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wynn and Judge Thacker joined. ARGUED: Arnedo Silvano Valera, LAW OFFICES OF VALERA & ASSOCIATES, Fairfax, Virginia, for Petitioner. Colette Jabes Winston, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffery R. Leist, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. DIAZ, Circuit Judge: Abner Perez-Morales seeks review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissing his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). The Board determined that Perez-Morales was ineligible for asylum because he failed to establish a sufficient nexus between persecution he experienced and his membership in a particular social group. Because that ruling is not supported by substantial evidence, we grant the petition for review in part and remand to the Board for further proceedings. We also remand Perez-Morales’s CAT claim for further consideration in light of our recent decisions addressing how a petitioner may show that a government will likely acquiesce in his torture. We affirm the Board’s decision on the remaining claims. I. A. Perez-Morales is a native and citizen of Guatemala. He entered the United States without inspection in December 2013. Two days later, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) detained him and initiated removal proceedings. Perez-Morales conceded his removability, but sought asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection, claiming that he would be unsafe in Guatemala for two separate reasons. First, Perez-Morales fears that Los Zetas, a gang that operates in Guatemala, will target him because he witnessed the gang commit several murders. In October 2013, Perez- Morales was delivering bread for a bakery when he saw members of the gang decapitate 2 and dismember several men on the side of a rural road—an event he described as a “massacre.” A.R. 193, 246. The Zetas chased Perez-Morales, stopped his car, beat him and robbed him, and threatened to kill him if he filed a police report. They told him “[t]his is just a warning so that you see the next time, it will be worse.” A.R. 105. Perez-Morales didn’t go to the police because he believed that they had been bought off by the Zetas, and that the gang would retaliate by killing him. He went into hiding in another part of Guatemala, and two months later fled to the United States. Second, Perez-Morales fears retaliation by Guatemalan police because his brother Urbano, a former police officer, refused to participate in corruption. Around 2007, Urbano ...
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