UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 20-1753 JOSE MANUEL VALLE AMAYA, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Submitted: January 28, 2022 Decided: March 3, 2022 Before WILKINSON and AGEE, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge. Petition for review denied by unpublished opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Agee and Judge Floyd joined. ON BRIEF: John E. Gallagher, Catonsville, Maryland, for Petitioner. Brian Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Timothy G. Hayes, Senior Litigation Counsel, Sunah Lee, Office of Immigration Litigation, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. WILKINSON, Circuit Judge: Jose Manuel Valle Amaya, a citizen of Honduras, applied for protection under the Convention Against Torture. The Immigration Judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals both denied his application, and Valle now petitions for review. Because substantial evidence supports the decisions below, we deny Valle’s petition. I. A. Valle entered the United States unlawfully in 2006. In July 2015, the Department of Homeland Security charged him with removability as a noncitizen present in the United States without being admitted or paroled. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i). Valle then conceded removability through counsel. To avoid removal, Valle initially applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). He later acknowledged that he was only applying for CAT protection. 1 Valle testified in support of his application at an April 2018 hearing. While in Honduras, Valle worked in construction supervising between fifteen and twenty workers and making a good living. For several years (and until 2004), gang members robbed him once or twice each month while he was walking home from work. Valle reported these robberies to the police, who would come and ask for details about what happened and who the gang members were. 1 In this appeal, Valle likewise only challenges the denial of relief under the CAT. 2 Because Valle oversaw payroll for his team, it was his responsibility to go to the bank and then pay each worker at the construction site. The robberies almost always happened after Valle had already paid the other workers. But on one occasion in 2005, several armed gang members came to a construction site and took the entire payroll. The gang members approached Valle and asked, “Where is Jose Manuel?”—without realizing that they were asking Valle about himself. During this robbery, one of the gang members hit Valle in the face with a pistol. Valle called the police, who came to help but did not arrive until after the gang members had left. At some point, Valle transferred to work in other Honduran provinces to avoid the gang members. While he was away, gang members would sometimes come to Valle’s house, saying that he had “accounts pending” with the gang. A.R. 70. Valle only returned home once a month to see his family, …
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