In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 19‐1025 GABRIELA ESCOBEDO MARQUEZ and DIANA J. SANCHEZ ESCOBEDO, Petitioners, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Nos. A208‐592‐740 and A208‐592‐741. ____________________ ARGUED JULY 7, 2020 — DECIDED JULY 13, 2020 ____________________ Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and KANNE, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. Gabriela Escobedo Marquez and her minor daughter, Diana Julieta Sanchez Escobedo, citizens of Mexico, petition for review of the denial of their application for asy‐ lum under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Escobedo Marquez sought relief based on threats of physical violence she had received because of her gay sexual orientation. An immigration judge, and later the Board of Immigration 2 No. 19‐1025 Appeals, concluded that threats to Escobedo Marquez’s life did not rise to the level of past persecution, and that she could not show that she faced a well‐founded fear of future perse‐ cution if she returned to Mexico. Because substantial evidence supports the agency’s decision, we deny the petition for re‐ view. BACKGROUND Escobedo Marquez and her daughter Diana (12 years old at the time) applied for admission into the United States at the California border in September 2015. The next day the Depart‐ ment of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings, and, at a hearing two months later, Escobedo Marquez con‐ ceded their removability under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A). She then applied for asylum and withholding of removal based on threats she had received because of her sexual orientation and her belief that she could not live as an openly gay woman in Mexico without being persecuted. At another hearing before the IJ, Escobedo Marquez testi‐ fied that she grew up in a town in central Mexico in a strict Catholic family. Because of her family’s religious values and fear of “rejection from society,” she did not accept her identity as a gay woman until 2013, when she was in her mid‐twenties. Before then, Escobedo Marquez had been in a long‐term rela‐ tionship with a man with whom she had her daughter (they also had a son who was born in the United States in 2006). After Escobedo Marquez embraced her sexual orientation, she began secretly dating women (in her hometown). About two years after she began dating women, Escobedo Marquez received written threats (via texts, social media, and letters) of physical harm to herself and her children. She No. 19‐1025 3 testified that one of those five threats warned that the perpe‐ trator “would cut off a piece of [her] skin for every hickey [she] left on his wife, and that [she] should watch out for [her] kids; that something bad could happen to them.” The threats left her frightened. Although she did not know for sure, she suspected that an ex‐girlfriend had sent them (posing as a man) because she was jealous of Escobedo Marquez’s rela‐ tionship with another woman. Escobedo ...
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