Matter of S-E-M-Z-, Applicant

Summary

The Board of Immigration Appeals sustained DHS’s appeal from a grant of statutory withholding of removal to a Honduran applicant. It held that the social-distinction element of a particular social group must generally be evaluated on a countrywide basis rather than within a neighborhood or other limited geographic area. The Board also concluded that the applicant’s family membership was not a central reason for the gang-related harm and remanded solely for consideration of protection under the Convention Against Torture regulations.

Holdings

1. For asylum and withholding-of-removal claims, the social-distinction element of a particular social group must generally be measured on a countrywide basis, rather than from the perspective of a neighborhood or other limited geographic location within the country.
2. The applicant did not establish nexus because, even if family membership was a but-for cause of the harm, it was not a central reason and played only an incidental or subordinate role to the gangs' nonprotected objectives of recruitment and maintaining power and control.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the applicant's proposed family-based particular social group was cognizable when the evidence showed recognition of the family within a Honduran neighborhood but not greater significance or social distinction within Honduran society as a whole.
2. Whether the applicant established that membership in the family-based particular social group was a central reason for the harm, including under the but-for and more-than-minor-role nexus framework.
3. Whether the Board should reach DHS's other arguments concerning statutory withholding of removal.
4. Whether the record should be remanded for the Immigration Judge to decide the applicant's Convention Against Torture claim.

Disposition

remanded