Manatt filed an amicus brief in the Tenth Circuit on behalf of country conditions expert Professor Adam Golob in support of a petitioner who is appealing the Board of Immigration Appeal (BIA)’s decision denying him asylum and withholding of removal and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).
Petitioner JBA represented himself, pro se, before the Immigration Judge (IJ) and the BIA, requesting asylum from police harassment and torture in his home country of El Salvador. JBA submitted evidence of three separate occasions of unwarranted targeting by the police, where he was beaten and detained without a charge or warrant and held incommunicado for months by the Salvadoran state. According to JBA, the police intentionally targeted him under a pretextual and baseless claim of gang affiliation and the real reason related to his and his mother’s membership in a human rights organization opposing state violence in El Salvador.
The IJ issued an oral decision, finding the petitioner credible but denying all relief. On asylum and withholding, the IJ found that imputed gang membership is not a protected ground, ignoring evidence of his political opinion. The IJ also denied CAT relief stating that the harm petitioner suffered by the Salvadoran state was not torture, and petitioner did not establish that he “would be singled out and tortured by the government or with the government’s acquiescence” if he was returned and that he could simply relocate from one neighborhood in El Salvador to another and avoid any further harm.
The BIA relied exclusively on a nexus finding to affirm the IJ’s decision that JBA was not targeted on account of a protected ground, and he had not met his burden of proof for asylum or withholding of removal. Further, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s decision denying CAT because there was no clear error in the IJ’s findings regarding future torture.
On appeal to the Tenth Circuit, JBA argued that the BIA erred in its nexus analysis and ignored key evidence, incorrectly finding that the numerous police beatings and detentions were not torture. Further, JBA argued that the harmful conditions he faced were country-wide and the IJ failed to consider whether relocation was reasonable.
In a brief filed on behalf of Dr. Golob, whose research focuses on exploitation, gang power, and state issues in El Salvador including the “state of exception,” Manatt provided further context to the country conditions in El Salvador. The brief demonstrated that El Salvador’s law enforcement has been empowered to act extrajudicially, arresting and detaining innocent civilians without cause in order to curb gang violence and show the purported effectiveness of its anti-gang policies. As the brief explains, police in El Salvador act with unchecked power to arrest “systematically based on age, socio-economic status, and vague or pretextual indicia of gang affiliation, not on any confirmed evidence of gang affiliation.” Those detained by the state are subjected to “inhumane living conditions, increased risk of illness, physical pain, neglect, unlawfully long detentions, disappearances, beatings, and torture.”
The Manatt team included Partners Benjamin Shatz and Christopher Wanger and Associates Andrew Beshai, Patrice Ruane and Annie Nguyen.
Read the full amicus brief here.