NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION File Name: 19a0305n.06 Case No. 18-4117 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jun 13, 2019 SANTIAGO LUCAS-LOPEZ, ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) Petitioner, ) ) ON PETITION FOR REVIEW v. ) FROM THE UNITED STATES ) BOARD OF IMMIGRATION WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, ) APPEALS ) Respondent. ) BEFORE: COOK, NALBANDIAN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. COOK, Circuit Judge. Santiago Lucas-Lopez petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order affirming an immigration judge’s denial of his applications for asylum and withholding of removal. Because Lucas-Lopez failed to establish membership in a particular social group protected under the Immigration and Nationality Act, we DENY his petition for review. I. Lucas-Lopez, a twenty-one-year-old native Guatemalan and indigenous Mayan Indian, entered the United States illegally in February 2014. A week later, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings by filing a notice to appear alleging that Lucas-Lopez was “an alien present in the United States without being admitted or paroled.” At a master calendar hearing in October 2015, Lucas-Lopez admitted all the factual allegations made in the notice to Case No. 18-4117, Lucas-Lopez v. Barr appear and conceded removability. The immigration judge designated Guatemala as the country of removal. Lucas-Lopez sought asylum and withholding of removal, claiming that he suffered past harm and feared future harm from gang members for his refusal to join a gang and his indigenous Mayan ancestry.1 At his individual hearing before the IJ, Lucas-Lopez testified that he was born in San Juan Ixcoy, Guatemala. His parents moved to the United States three years later, leaving him in Guatemala with his paternal grandmother and uncle. There, Lucas-Lopez fell victim to gang violence. The same gang routinely assaulted him on his way to school, never explaining why they targeted him. During at least one altercation, the gang members demanded money. On other occasions, they offered Lucas-Lopez money to join the gang and help them rob other people, promising that— if he joined them—they would stop beating him up. But he refused. Because they offered him a spot in the gang, Lucas-Lopez suspected that some gang members might be Mayan. He saw the gang beat up other people, but did not know their heritage. In 2014, a few years after his paternal grandmother’s death, Lucas-Lopez moved to the United States, where he now lives with his parents and four biological siblings who were all born in the United States. When he left Guatemala, his younger sister stayed behind and lived with his maternal grandmother; he could not join her because the household had too little space and too little food. That sister, now fifteen or sixteen years old and still living in Guatemala, has no trouble 1 In addition, Lucas-Lopez applied for protection under Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture, 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c)–1208.18. But he waived appeal of that claim before the Board, and does the same here by failing to mention it in his brief. ...
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