NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS NOV 6 2019 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT AMERICA GONZALEZ-GOMEZ, No. 17-72903 Petitioner, Agency No. A208-935-834 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted November 4, 2019** Seattle, Washington Before: GOULD and NGUYEN, Circuit Judges, and R. COLLINS,*** District Judge. America Gonzalez-Gomez, a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) order dismissing her appeal * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). *** The Honorable Raner C. Collins, United States District Judge for the District of Arizona, sitting by designation. from the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) decision denying her application for withholding of removal.1 We have jurisdiction to review the exhausted claims under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and we deny Gonzalez-Gomez’s petition for review of those claims. We lack jurisdiction to review the unexhausted claim of collateral estoppel, and we dismiss that claim. 1. Substantial evidence supports the BIA’s determination that Gonzalez- Gomez failed to demonstrate an objectively reasonable fear of future persecution on account of her membership in the particular social group “lesbians in Guatemala with masculine appearance and sexual identities.”2 Even assuming that Gonzalez-Gomez’s mother and uncle harmed her when she was a child because of her sexual identity, neither lives in Guatemala today. Gonzalez-Gomez also failed to show “a systematic ‘pattern or practice’ of persecution against the group to which [she] belongs” in Guatemala. Wakkary v. Holder, 558 F.3d 1049, 1060 (9th Cir. 2009) (quoting 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2)(iii)(A)). The record evidence shows that the Guatemalan government has made significant progress in recent years to 1 The BIA also dismissed Gonzalez-Gomez’s appeal from the IJ’s denial of her application for asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture. Gonzalez-Gomez does not challenge those rulings in her petition for review. 2 Gonzalez-Gomez suggests that the agency erred by making this determination without considering the evidence she submitted with her motion to reopen. Because her briefs do not raise any challenge to the agency’s denial of her motion to reopen, this argument has been waived. See Lopez-Vasquez v. Holder, 706 F.3d 1072, 1079–80 (9th Cir. 2013) (finding waiver on similar facts). 2 protect LGBTQ rights. See id. at 1061 (noting that a “pattern or practice may . . . be the work of private actors, so long as the persecution is sufficiently widespread and the government is unable or unwilling to control those actors”). 2. Substantial evidence also supports the BIA’s determination that Gonzalez-Gomez failed to demonstrate a nexus between the harm she experienced and her membership in the particular social group “the Gonzalez-Gomez family.” See Zetino v. Holder, 622 F.3d 1007, 1016 (9th Cir. 2010) (“An alien’s desire to ...
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