United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 21-1117 MIGUEL JIMENEZ-PORTILLO, HUGO DANILLO TORRES-PORTILLO, and RACHEL IRA-TORRES, Petitioners, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND,* UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. PETITION FOR REVIEW OF AN ORDER OF THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS Before Barron, Chief Judge, Selya and Kayatta, Circuit Judges. Steve J. Gutherz on brief for petitioners. Brian M. Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Anthony C. Payne, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, and Lance L. Jolley, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, on brief for respondent. * Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 43(c)(2), Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been substituted for former Acting Attorney General Robert Montague Wilkinson as the respondent. December 27, 2022 SELYA, Circuit Judge. The rule that an agency's determination of a disputed question of fact must stand so long as that determination is supported by substantial evidence presents a formidable barrier to those who challenge such a determination. This case illustrates the point. Concluding, as we do, that the final decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) rests upon a fact-based determination that is supported by substantial evidence in the record as a whole, we deny the petition for review. I The Immigration Judge (IJ) found the petitioners generally credible, so we draw the facts largely from their testimony. See Rodríguez-Villar v. Barr, 930 F.3d 24, 25 (1st Cir. 2019). Petitioners Miguel Jimenez-Portillo, Hugo Danillo Torres-Portillo, and Rachel Ira-Torres are El Salvadoran nationals. Jimenez-Portillo and Ira-Torres are married, and Jimenez-Portillo and Torres-Portillo are brothers. All three petitioners came to the United States, without inspection, in 2015, having left El Salvador for fear of harm at the hands of the Mara Salvatrucha 18 gang.1 1 The record is tenebrous as to which specific gang may have caused the petitioners' harm. When testifying, the petitioners referred to the gang as "Eighteen" and "MS-18." In their brief, however, the petitioners refer to the gang as "Mara Salvatrucha 18," which — based on other evidence in the record — could potentially implicate two different gangs: Mara Salvatrucha ("MS- - 3 - According to the petitioners, they lived in an area of El Salvador where gang activity was prevalent. Jimenez-Portillo operated a small store out of the family's home. In January of 2015, two members of Mara Salvatrucha 18 — one of whom the petitioners identified as Kevin Alexander Masariegos — visited the store and demanded that Jimenez-Portillo assist the gang by hiding their weapons on the premises. Jimenez-Portillo refused, and the gang members warned him that "not collaborating with us [] has consequences."2 A few days later, Masariegos and other gang members returned to the store. This time, the gang members assaulted Jimenez-Portillo, breaking a tooth in the process. The protagonists had no further contact until September of 2015, when Masariegos (accompanied by another gang member) returned to the store. Masariegos held Jimenez-Portillo at gunpoint and told him that the gang members had "orders from the penitentiary to kill" …
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