NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _____________ No. 19-3733 _____________ CRISTIAN JOSE CANTARERO CASTRO, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ______________ On Petition for Review from a Final Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (Agency No. A215-697-489) Immigration Judge: Alice Song Hartye ______________ Argued: September 16, 2020 ______________ Before: KRAUSE, RESTREPO, and BIBAS, Circuit Judges. (Filed: October 13,2020) Bridget Cambria [ARGUED] Cambria & Kline 532 Walnut Street Reading, PA 19601 Counsel for Petitioner Susan B. Green [ARGUED] United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation 1100 L Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20530 William C. Minick Steven K. Uejio United States Department of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation P.O. Box 878 Ben Franklin Stations Washington, DC 20044 Counsel for Respondent _____________ OPINION * ______________ RESTREPO, Circuit Judge. We are asked to review the denial of a non-citizen’s application for withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Because the Immigration Judge (IJ) erred in significant respects and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed without explanation, we will vacate and remand for reconsideration. I. A. Petitioner Cristian Cantarero Castro is a 22-year-old Honduran man who identifies as bisexual and gay. In 2017, at the age of twenty, he was raped at knife point by a man with tattoos, who told him that “he would like it because he is a faggot.” Administrative * This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. 2 Record (A.R.) 355, 365. He did not go to the police at that time because he was afraid of being ridiculed for having been raped by a man, or worse, that his assailant would find out and kill him. He also claims that members of a major gang in Honduras (“Mara 18”) repeatedly assaulted and harassed him because of his sexual orientation and political opinion after they discovered that he voted for the National Party (the party in power) rather than the Alliance Party (the gang’s preferred political party) in the 2017 presidential election. During these encounters, the gang members called him a traitor and asked him to “unite with them.” A.R. 162. After he refused, they threatened to kill him. They added that they “did not like him because he was gay,” A.R. 47, that they would make a man out of him by beating him, and that they could kill him because gay people “don’t mean anything.” A.R. 104. Cantarero Castro does not believe Honduran authorities can protect him. Cantarero Castro had witnessed and experienced the harassment and intimidation of gay men by police, including a time when officers pointed their guns at him and his gay friends from a distance, as if they were going to shoot them, and laughed. And gang members had told him, “[T]he police is with us, and if you go there, it’s going to be good for nothing for you.” ...
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