Marta Zavala-Molina v. Pamela Bondi

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: November 19, 2025
• Docket: 20-72063
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS NOV 19 2025 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

MARTA ALICIA ZAVALA-MOLINA, No. 20-72063

Petitioner, Agency No. A208-543-960

v. MEMORANDUM* PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General,

Respondent.

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

Argued and Submitted October 7, 2025 Pasadena, California

Before: WARDLAW and KOH, Circuit Judges, and ROSENTHAL,** District Judge.

Marta Zavala-Molina, a native and citizen of El Salvador, petitions for

review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) dismissing her

appeal from an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her applications for asylum

and withholding of removal.

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Lee H. Rosenthal, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas, sitting by designation. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 and review the agency’s factual

findings for substantial evidence. Yali Wang v. Sessions, 861 F.3d 1003, 1007 (9th

Cir. 2017). We deny the petition for review.

1. On appeal, Zavala-Molina asserts membership in the particular social

group (“PSG”) of “females who have been raped by gangs who have reported their

crimes.” The government contends that this PSG was not properly presented to the

BIA and is therefore unexhausted. We disagree.

Although the BIA deemed this PSG was waived, it expressly analyzed the

PSG advanced to the IJ, explaining that the formulation before it was merely

another “iteration” of those previously proposed and concluding that each was

“impermissibly, circularly defined by the harm asserted.” Because the BIA

reached the merits of whether the PSG was cognizable, Zavala-Molina properly

exhausted her claim. See Rodriguez-Castellon v. Holder, 733 F.3d 847, 852 (9th

Cir. 2013) (holding that “we may review any issue addressed on the merits by the

BIA”).

2. We conclude that the BIA erred in finding no nexus between

Zavala-Molina’s harm and a protected ground. For asylum, the protected

characteristic must be “one central reason” for the past or feared future harm; for

withholding, it must be “a reason.” Rodriguez-Zuniga v. Garland, 69 F.4th 1012,

1018 (9th Cir. 2023).

2 The record compels the conclusion that Zavala-Molina’s second assault

occurred because she reported the first assault, a rape, to the police. The assailant

specifically threatened Zavala-Molina not to report the first assault to the police,

warning that “wherever [she] went he was going to look for [her] until he found

[her].” He also told her that he would “look for [her] as if [he was] looking for a

needle.” Eight years later, after Zavala-Molina had reported the first attack to the

police, her assailant located her and assaulted her a second time, stating that “[she]

had thought that he would never find [her] and that [she] had reached [her] last day

of life.” These facts further support the finding that Zavala-Molina faces a clear

probability of future persecution on account of her PSG. See Chand v. I.N.S.,

222 F.3d 1066, 1079 (9th Cir. 2000). Accordingly, the agency erred in concluding

that Zavala-Molina failed to show a nexus between her PSG and her persecution.

3. Nevertheless, even assuming that Zavala-Molina established membership

in a cognizable PSG and that her second assault constituted persecution on account

of that membership, her claim fails because she has not shown that the Salvadoran

government was unable or unwilling to protect her. See Navas v. INS, 217 F.3d

646, 655–56 (9th Cir. 2000).

The record shows that after the first assault, authorities took her report, took

her to a forensic medical examination then to a hospital for treatment, and on

multiple occasions interviewed her and asked her to review photographs in

3 attempts to identify the assailant. That they did not ultimately apprehend him does

not compel the conclusion that they were unwilling or unable to help. Compare

Nahrvani v. Gonzales, 399 F.3d 1148, 1154 (9th Cir. 2005) (police investigated but

could not solve the crimes), with In re O-Z & I-Z, 22 I. & N. Dec. 23, 26 (BIA

1998) (police took “no action beyond writing a report”), and Mashiri v. Ashcroft,

383 F.3d 1112, 1115 (9th Cir. 2004) (police “quickly closed their investigation”

and told the petitioners that “such things happened all the time”). El Salvador’s

criminalization of rape and domestic violence further supports the agency’s

conclusion that the government is not unwilling or unable to control such conduct.

See Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051, 1073–76 (9th Cir. 2017) (en

banc) (considering country crime statistics and laws as factors to determine

whether the government was unable or unwilling to control private actors).

PETITION DENIED.