NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 3 2019 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT KELLY SUGEY CONTRERAS-LARIOS, No. 15-73706 Petitioner, Agency No. A200-812-547 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted March 5, 2019 Pasadena, California Before: WARDLAW and BENNETT, Circuit Judges, and SESSIONS,** District Judge. Kelly Contreras Larios (“Contreras”) petitions for review of the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) upholding the denial of her claims for asylum and withholding of removal. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(1). We grant Contreras’s petition for review. We remand Contreras’s * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable William K. Sessions III, United States District Judge for the District of Vermont, sitting by designation. claims to the BIA for it to consider, in the first instance, whether the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) prejudicially denied Contreras due process of law by deciding her case without a hearing, in the absence of an explicit, personal waiver of her right to a hearing. Contreras fled from El Salvador to the United States when she was fifteen years old. In El Salvador, she had been kidnapped by the Mara Salvatrucha (“MS”) gang and held for three days while gang members physically abused and raped her. She was released only on the condition that she pay the gang members a sum of money weekly. In her pro se application for asylum and withholding of removal, she wrote that the gang had targeted her because she was “a young lady.” See Mohammed v. Gonzales, 400 F.3d 785, 797 (9th Cir. 2005) (“[T]he recognition that girls or women of a particular clan or nationality (or even in some circumstances females in general) may constitute a social group is simply a logical application of our law.”). Contreras’s attorney asserted before the IJ, the BIA, and this court, that she is a member of the particular social group “Salvadoran women tortured by misogynist gang members who believe that women are to be dominated and controlled wholly.” “[A]n alien who faces deportation is entitled to a full and fair hearing of his claims and a reasonable opportunity to present evidence on his behalf.” Colmenar v. INS, 210 F.3d 967, 971 (9th Cir. 2000). Testimony at an asylum hearing is 2 central to the “integrity of the asylum process itself,” Oshodi v. Holder, 729 F.3d 883, 890 (9th Cir. 2013), particularly because “there are cases where an alien establishes eligibility for asylum by means of his oral testimony when such eligibility would not have been established by the documents alone,” Matter of Fefe, 20 I. & N. Dec. 116, 118 (BIA 1989). Here, the IJ denied Contreras’s claim for asylum and withholding of removal on February 26, 2014, prior to holding the scheduled hearing on the merits. The IJ ...
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