Felipes v. Bondi

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: April 3, 2025
• Docket: 23-3236
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 3 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

FERNANDO FELIPES; FABIANE No. 23-3236 MIRANDA SILVA; FERNANDO KAHIK Agency Nos. BRIAN SILVA FELIPES; YANNE SILVA A220-248-558 FELIPES, A220-248-559 A220-248-560 Petitioners, A220-248-561 v. MEMORANDUM* PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General,

Respondent.

On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals

Submitted April 1, 2025** Portland, Oregon

Before: BYBEE, LEE, and FORREST, Circuit Judges.

Petitioners Fernando Felipes, his wife, and his two minor children petition for

review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) decision dismissing their appeal

of the immigration judge’s (IJ) denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and relief

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). under the Convention Against Torture (CAT).1 We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C.

§ 1252, and we deny the petition.

“When the BIA summarily affirms the IJ’s decision, we review the IJ’s

decision as the final agency action.” Sanchez v. Holder, 704 F.3d 1107, 1109 (9th

Cir. 2012) (per curiam) (citation omitted). We review factual findings for substantial

evidence and legal conclusions de novo. Plancarte Sauceda v. Garland, 23 F.4th

824, 831 (9th Cir. 2022). Under the substantial evidence standard, we will reverse a

factual finding only if “any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude

to the contrary based on the evidence in the record.” Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions,

850 F.3d 1051, 1059 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (internal citations and quotation marks

omitted).

1. Asylum and Withholding of Removal. Asylum applicants must

demonstrate “[past] persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of

race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political

opinion.” Singh v. Garland, 57 F.4th 643, 652 (9th Cir. 2023) (citation omitted).

Felipes asserts that he was persecuted based on his membership in three

particular social groups: (1) Brazilians who oppose organized crime, (2) family

members of drug addicts indebted to criminal dealers, and (3) members of the

1 Felipes’s wife and two minor children assert derivative asylum claims. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(3)(A).

2 23-3236 Felipes nuclear family. The IJ concluded that his first two groups were not

cognizable and that there was no nexus for his third group because Felipes and his

family were targeted solely for financial reasons. Felipes does not meaningfully

challenge these conclusions on appeal. Rather, Felipes argues that the IJ failed to

“specifically address the family nexus as applying differently in the context of

withholding compared to asylum.” However, any conflation of the nexus standards

for asylum and withholding of removal is immaterial because the IJ found that

Felipes and his family were targeted solely for financial gain. See Barajas-Romero

v. Lynch, 846 F.3d 351, 360 (9th Cir. 2017) (observing that where “there was no

nexus at all,” the court draws “no distinction between the ‘one central reason’ phrase

in the asylum statute and the ‘a reason’ phrase in the withholding statute”). Because

failure to prove a nexus to a protected ground is an independent basis for denying

asylum and withholding of removal, see Rodriguez-Zuniga v. Garland, 69 F.4th

1012, 1023 (9th Cir. 2023), we do not reach Felipes’s arguments about the IJ’s

persecution analyses.2

2. Due Process Claims. Felipes also argues that the IJ (1) deprived him of

a fair proceeding by misstating the date of his son’s death and (2) improperly

discredited Felipes’s testimony by labeling some statements as hearsay. We do not

2 Felipes does not challenge the IJ’s denial of CAT relief, therefore he has forfeited this issue. See Martinez-Serrano v. INS, 94 F.3d 1256, 1259 (9th Cir. 1996).

3 23-3236 consider these arguments because Felipes failed to exhaust them below. Agyeman v.

INS, 296 F.3d 871, 877 (9th Cir. 2002) (“[W]e may not entertain due process claims

based on correctable procedural errors unless the [petitioner] raised them below.”).

PETITION DENIED.

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