NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUN 15 2021 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT LIBORIO DE LA LUZ RAMOS, AKA No. 17-73218 Mara De La Luz Ramos, Agency No. A206-498-269 Petitioner, v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted August 31, 2020 Pasadena, California Before: SILER,** BERZON, and LEE, Circuit Judges. Valeria De La Luz Ramos petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“the Board’s”) dismissal of her appeal of the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ’s”) order denying her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Eugene E. Siler, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation. protection under the Convention Against Torture.1 We deny the petition in part, grant it in part, and remand for the agency to grant deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture. 1. The Board did not abuse its discretion in denying De La Luz Ramos’s claims for asylum and withholding of removal on the grounds that her involuntary manslaughter conviction constituted a particularly serious crime. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1158(b)(2)(A)(ii), 1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). “The applicable legal standard to determine if a crime is particularly serious, described in the [Board]’s decision in Matter of Frentescu, 18 I. & N. Dec. 244 (BIA 1982), requires the agency to ask whether ‘the nature of the conviction, the underlying facts and circumstances[,] and the sentence imposed justify the presumption that the convicted immigrant is a danger to the community.’” Avendano-Hernandez v. Lynch, 800 F.3d 1072, 1077 (9th Cir. 2015) (quoting Delgado v. Holder, 648 F.3d 1095, 1107 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc)). The Board did not exceed the scope of its review by engaging in impermissible de novo factfinding. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(3)(i). First, the Board’s determination that a three-year term of imprisonment is a “significant sentence” was not a factual finding. Rather, the BIA was assigning weight (“significant”) to a fact (three-year sentence) as part of its discretionary analysis of 1 De La Luz Ramos’s birth name was Liborio, but she identifies as Valeria. 2 the Frentescu factors. The BIA was authorized to undertake that analysis. See Delgado, 648 F.3d at 1106–07. Second, the Board’s discussion of the elements of involuntary manslaughter and its citation to Sea Horse Ranch, Inc. v. Superior Court, 24 Cal. App. 4th 446, 454 (1994), was not factfinding. Consistent with the first Frentescu factor, the nature of the conviction, the BIA correctly identified the legal standard under which De La Luz Ramos was convicted. De La Luz Ramos was charged with and pleaded guilty to killing her friend in the “commission . . . of a noninherently dangerous felony,” the practice of medicine without a license. Sea Horse Ranch involved the second clause of …
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