RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit I.O.P. 32.1(b) File Name: 23a0094p.06 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT ┐ JOGELLY PAOLA TURCIOS-FLORES; TOMAS DASAET │ ARGUETA-TURCIOS; ANGEL ANDRES ARGUETA- │ TURCIOS, │ Petitioners, > No. 22-3325 │ │ v. │ │ MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, │ Respondent. │ ┘ On Petition for Review from the Board of Immigration Appeals; Nos. A 209 223 502; A 209 223 503; A 209 223 504. Decided and Filed: May 5, 2023 Before: COLE, GIBBONS, and READLER, Circuit Judges. _________________ COUNSEL ON BRIEF: Justin S. Fowles, Samuel W. Wardle, FROST BROWN TODD, Louisville, Kentucky, for Petitioners. Allison Frayer, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. COLE, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which GIBBONS, J., joined. READLER, J., (pp. 14–17), delivered a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. No. 22-3325 Turcios-Flores, et al. v. Garland Page 2 _________________ OPINION _________________ COLE, Circuit Judge. Jogelly Paola Turcios-Flores1 petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ order affirming the Immigration Judge’s denial of her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. The Board correctly denied Turcios-Flores’s application for protection under the Convention Against Torture and her asylum application insofar as it relates to her membership in her husband’s family. But because the Board’s decision with respect to two of Turcios-Flores’s additional proposed social groups was not supported by substantial evidence, and because the withholding- of-removal analysis was flawed, we grant the petition in part, deny the petition in part, and remand for further proceedings. I. BACKGROUND Turcios-Flores and her husband operated two merchant stands at the Colon Market in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Like the market’s other merchants, Turcios-Flores and her husband were subject to a “war tax” imposed by MS-13—a gang well-known for its harassment, extortion, violence, and intimidation tactics. Under MS-13’s influence, the family paid 200 lempiras each week to operate their stands at the market. In 2012, Turcios-Flores’s husband inherited a farm in Teupasenti, a rural part of Honduras, from his father. The family began growing coffee and plantains at the farm using skills learned from Turcios-Flores’s father-in-law. The family was careful, however, not to reveal their ownership of the land as they feared there would be trouble if others knew of it. The only person outside of their nuclear family to learn of their farm was one of their cousins, whom they would occasionally take to the farm for work. That same cousin later joined MS-13, serving as the gang’s neighborhood head. In that role, he shared Turcios-Flores’s secret landownership with MS-13. Almost immediately, MS-13 1 In the Administrative Record, Turcios-Flores’s name appears both with and without hyphenation. To match the case name, the hyphenated version is used throughout the opinion. No. 22-3325 Turcios-Flores, et al. v. Garland Page 3 began calling Turcios-Flores’s husband and demanding an additional payment of 20,000 lempiras, an amount 100 times greater than any sum the family had previously paid. The …
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