United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 18-1080 ___________________________ Milagro Del Blanco De Guevara, et al. lllllllllllllllllllllPetitioners v. William P. Barr, Attorney General of the United States lllllllllllllllllllllRespondent ____________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals ____________ Submitted: December 12, 2018 Filed: March 21, 2019 ____________ Before LOKEN, MELLOY, and ERICKSON, Circuit Judges. ____________ LOKEN, Circuit Judge. Milagro Del Carmen Blanco de Guevara and her two minor children, natives and citizens of El Salvador, entered the United States in 2015 without inspection. The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) initiated removal proceedings. De Guevara conceded removability and applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, with her children as derivative applicants. After a hearing at which de Guevara testified, the Immigration Judge (IJ) denied relief on multiple grounds -- de Guevara’s testimony was not credible, she failed to articulate a particular social group on which to base a claim of asylum, she failed to prove past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution, and she failed to show that the government of El Salvador was unable or unwilling to control alleged persecution by criminal gangs. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed in a thorough opinion. De Guevara petitions for review of the BIA’s final agency action. We conclude that the BIA’s decision was “supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole” and therefore deny the petition for review. I.N.S. v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481 (1992), quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1105a(a)(4) (standard of review). After de Guevara’s husband came to the United States in 2011, she continued to raise her children in El Salvador in the same village as her parents and sister. De Guevara testified at the hearing that in October 2015, she received a phone call and then a letter from the gang “Mara 18” demanding $1500 and threatening to kill de Guevara or her children. She reported to the police but did not show them the letter because “if you go to the police, they are going to kill you.” Instead, de Guevara left El Salvador and entered the United States with her children. The IJ found de Guevara’s testimony not credible because she gave a materially inconsistent explanation of her fear of returning to El Salvador in a sworn statement to the Border Patrol and in a subsequent “credible fear” interview at the asylum office. The BIA ruled that this credibility finding was not clearly erroneous. We “defer to the IJ’s credibility findings if they are supported by a specific, cogent reason for disbelief,” as they are in this case. Alemu v. Gonzalez, 403 F.3d 572, 574 (8th Cir. 2005) (quotation omitted). However, it is not clear that the inconsistencies, though material, “are at the heart of the asylum claim.” Sheikh v. Gonzales, 427 F.3d 1077, 1080 (8th Cir. 2005) (quotation omitted). Therefore, like the BIA we will also review the merits of that claim. ...
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