NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604 Argued March 3, 2020 Decided March 24, 2020 Before FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge No. 19-1996 LEYLA E. HERNANDEZ-DIAZ and Petition for Review of an Order of the ALISSON M. MORAN-HERNANDEZ, Board of Immigration Appeals. Petitioners, v. Nos. A208-989-725 and A208-989-726 WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ORDER Leyla Hernandez-Diaz, a citizen of El Salvador, petitions, along with her minor daughter, for review of the denial of her applications for asylum and withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act. She sought relief based on threats she received from gang members because she was a police officer. Because substantial evidence supports the immigration judge’s decision that the threats were too vague and speculative to establish persecution and were insufficiently connected to her occupation, we deny the petition for review. No. 19-1996 Page 2 Background Hernandez-Diaz entered the United States without proper documentation in May 2016 with her minor daughter, Alisson Moran-Hernandez, who is also a petitioner in this case. (The daughter’s applications are derivative of her mother’s.) The Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings, and Hernandez-Diaz conceded that she was removable under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A). She applied for asylum and withholding of removal based on the hazard that MS-13 gang members posed to her life because she was a police officer. She also sought protection under the Convention Against Torture, but she does not challenge the denial of that relief. At a hearing before an immigration judge (“IJ”), Hernandez-Diaz and her husband (who had left El Salvador separately) testified that, for years, they had been national police officers in El Salvador without incident. That changed in August 2015, when Hernandez-Diaz was in her home and unknown people began banging on the exterior wall of the house. She turned off the lights and hid with her daughter. She called her co-workers on the police force, but by the time they arrived, the perpetrators had fled. Hernandez-Diaz never saw them, but she believed that they were members of the MS-13 gang because it is the dominant gang in the area. She testified that gang members targeted her for “the simple fact that [she and her husband] are police officers.” The gangs knew that they were police officers, Hernandez-Diaz and her husband thought, because they wore uniforms while on duty, were photographed while working, and they hung their washed uniforms on a clothesline outside to dry. The next month, MS-13 gang members shot guns into the air in Hernandez- Diaz’s neighborhood. Police officers responded to the scene and arrested three gang members. The gang members had fired the guns, Hernandez-Diaz believed, to threaten her. A neighbor later warned Hernandez-Diaz and her husband to be careful because someone had threated to kill them and their daughter. Hernandez-Diaz and her husband ...
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