Matter of D-G-B-L-

Summary

The Board of Immigration Appeals held that the serious nonpolitical crime bar to asylum and withholding of removal does not include a duress exception. The Board concluded that the respondent’s admitted drug-trafficking-related conduct established serious reasons to believe she had committed a qualifying crime, making her ineligible for asylum and withholding. The Board also denied protection under the Convention Against Torture, finding insufficient evidence of a particularized risk of torture and government acquiescence, sustained DHS’s appeal, vacated the Immigration Judge’s decision, and ordered removal to Mexico.

Holdings

1. The Immigration Judge's credibility finding was not clearly erroneous because the Immigration Judge considered the relevant testimony, documentary evidence, inconsistencies, omissions, and the respondent's explanations under the totality of the circumstances.
2. The serious nonpolitical crime bar to asylum and withholding of removal does not include a duress exception. A respondent may not use duress as an affirmative defense to overcome probable cause that she committed a serious nonpolitical crime.
3. The respondent's admissions that she knowingly laundered millions of dollars for a drug cartel established probable cause that she committed a serious nonpolitical crime in Mexico, and her duress claim was legally insufficient to satisfy her burden of showing that the bar did not apply.
4. The respondent failed to establish that it was more likely than not that she would be tortured in Mexico because the record did not demonstrate a particularized, current threat from her former partner or the Sinaloa cartel.
5. The respondent failed to establish that a Mexican public official would consent to or acquiesce in torture because generalized governmental ineffectiveness and the record of prior police interactions did not show that officials had awareness of specific conduct amounting to torture and thereafter breached a legal duty to intervene.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the Immigration Judge clearly erred in finding the respondent credible despite inconsistencies, omissions, and alleged implausibility in her account.
2. Whether the serious nonpolitical crime bar to asylum and withholding of removal includes a duress exception.
3. Whether the respondent established that it was more likely than not that she would be tortured in Mexico with the consent or acquiescence of a public official.
4. Whether the Immigration Judge's reliance on generalized country-conditions evidence and an assumed cartel threat established a particularized threat of torture and governmental acquiescence.

Disposition

other