FILED NOT FOR PUBLICATION MAR 21 2023 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT DANIEL AMAYA-REYNALDO, No. 21-697 Petitioner, Agency No. A206-909-961 v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted March 17, 2023** Pasadena, California Before: PAEZ, MILLER, and VANDYKE, Circuit Judges. Petitioner seeks review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision dismissing the appeal of the denial by the Immigration Judge (IJ) of deferral of * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and we deny the petition. Petitioner is a native and citizen of El Salvador who entered the United States without authorization in 2005 and has resided here ever since. In 2015, Petitioner applied for asylum and withholding, stating that he feared “extortion by the MS-13,” that gangs target repatriates from the United States, and that he would be “a good candidate to be extorted.” His amended application added that he feared he would be persecuted and tortured by Salvadoran security forces “known to commit extrajudicial killings” and organized criminals, that the government there was unwilling to protect him, and that statistics and reports by human rights groups supported his fear of torture by corrupt Salvadoran officials. At his 2018 immigration hearing, Petitioner further testified that he had once been beaten as a youth by gang members for refusing to smoke marijuana with them, but he had otherwise only experienced thefts, and he had never received a beating requiring medical treatment. He recounted several events when family members had been extorted or harmed: his brother and mother had been extorted, his uncle had been “run over by a car” of gangsters, and two siblings had been beaten by gangsters. The IJ first held that because Petitioner didn’t contest that he had been convicted of a “particularly serious crime,” he was ineligible for asylum or 2 withholding of removal. 1 Thus, the only eligible relief was deferral of removal under the CAT (“CAT Deferral”). The IJ denied CAT Deferral relief. The IJ reasoned that even if Petitioner was credible, he failed to show “it [was] more likely than not that [he] would be tortured as defined in the regulations much less by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a government official or other person acting in an official capacity.” Harms suffered when Petitioner was a child—any beatings and thefts— and speculation that gang members may single him out for extortion as a repatriate did not rise to the level of torture, nor did the incidents suffered by his family (the hit-and-run killing of his uncle, extortion of his mother, and …
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