FILED NOT FOR PUBLICATION JUL 23 2018 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT RENEE GARCIA-GONZALEZ, AKA No. 16-70257 Renee Garcia, AKA Gillermo Garcia Lopez, AKA Guillermo Garcia-Gonzalez, Agency No. A029-246-975 AKA Rene Garcia-Gonzalez, AKA Gillermo Garcia-Lopez, AKA Guillermo Lopez-Garcia, MEMORANDUM* Petitioner, v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted July 12, 2018 Pasadena, California Before: BERZON, FISHER,** and WATFORD, Circuit Judges. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable D. Michael Fisher, United States Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting by designation. Page 2 of 5 The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denied Renee Garcia-Gonzalez’s claim for protection under the Convention Against Torture, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) upheld the IJ’s decision and dismissed the appeal. Garcia- Gonzalez now petitions for review of the BIA’s decision. In his removal proceedings, Garcia-Gonzalez provided a declaration setting out his harrowing experiences in his native Mexico and fears of future torture if forced to return. In denying relief under CAT, the IJ offered two distinct grounds for his decision. First, he found that Garcia-Gonzalez’s declaration was “insufficient to establish the truth of his claims.” Alternatively, he found that, “assuming arguendo the truth of [Garcia-Gonzalez’s] claims in his declaration, . . . [he] has failed to establish eligibility for deferral under the CAT.” The BIA relied on the second ground only, assuming the contents of the declaration to be true for purposes of the appeal and declining to address the IJ’s other findings. The BIA then found that Garcia-Gonzalez had not shown that he was more likely than not to be tortured if returned to Mexico. Substantial evidence does not support the BIA’s determination. The evidence in the record, including Garcia-Gonzalez’s declaration and country conditions evidence, “compels a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the BIA’s Page 3 of 5 decision is incorrect.” Tampubolon v. Holder, 610 F.3d 1056, 1059 (9th Cir. 2010). Garcia-Gonzalez fears torture from three different sources: Mexican police officers, who have beaten him many times in the past; cartel members, who have kidnapped him and murdered his entire family; and mental health institutions, where he has seen police fail to protect patients from one another and, on one occasion, commit mass murder of patients. Although the proper inquiry requires calculating the sum of the weighted probabilities of each particular source of torture, we conclude that Garcia-Gonzalez has shown a likelihood that he will suffer torture at the hands of police officers. Therefore, we need not consider the additional likelihood of torture in mental health institutions or from cartel members. The proposition that Garcia-Gonzalez is more likely than not to be tortured by Mexican police officers follows from two premises. First, it is nearly certain that, if returned to Mexico, he will again ...
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