Mejia-Alvarenga v. Garland, No. 22-60554 (5th Cir. 2024)
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In this case heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Marta Alicia Mejia-Alvarenga, a citizen of El Salvador, sought to challenge the denial of her application for asylum by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Mejia-Alvarenga was detained when trying to cross the Rio Grande into the United States and was subsequently charged with removability due to her lack of valid documentation. She filed an application for statutory withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, later amending her application to seek asylum, based on threats she received from a man named Rigoberto Nelson and others associated with him.
The immigration judge denied Mejia-Alvarenga’s application and ordered her removal to El Salvador. Despite finding Mejia-Alvarenga a credible witness and acknowledging she had suffered previous harm amounting to persecution, the immigration judge ruled she had not been harmed due to political opinion or membership in a particular social group. The judge also concluded that Mejia-Alvarenga did not demonstrate a well-founded fear of future persecution because she did not show that the government would be unable or unwilling to control a future persecutor.
The Court of Appeals denied Mejia-Alvarenga's petition in part and dismissed it in part due to lack of jurisdiction. It ruled that the BIA did not err in concluding that Mejia-Alvarenga failed to establish that the Salvadoran government was unable or unwilling to protect her from private persecutors. The court also rejected Mejia-Alvarenga’s claim that the BIA violated its regulatory obligation to be impartial and her argument that the BIA violated her due process rights by allowing a single BIA member to render its decision. Lastly, the court dismissed Mejia-Alvarenga's claim that the BIA committed an abuse of discretion by not referring her case to a three-member BIA panel, ruling it lacked jurisdiction over this claim.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on March 8, 2024.
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