Denial of asylum request vacated by 1st Circuit

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The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appels has reversed an order for the removal of a Guatemalan who was among the workers detained during a raid on the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford.

Petitioner Manuel Ordonez-Quino, an indigenous Mayan Quiché, claimed asylum based on persecution.

The Board of Immigration Appeals upheld an immigration judge’s decision to deny the asylum request.

“[I]t appears that the IJ — and the BIA following suit — ignored or unreasonably interpreted crucial documentary evidence linking Ordonez-Quino’s experiences to his protected Mayan Quiché identity,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote for a unanimous 1st Circuit panel. “Ordonez-Quino has amply shown that his Mayan Quiché identity was ‘at least one central reason’ why he and his community were targeted by the Guatemalan army, and he need
show no more than that.”

The court ordered a remand.

“On remand, … the agency must determine whether the harms Ordonez-Quino suffered in Guatemala on account of his Mayan identity meet the standard of past persecution, viewed in the aggregate and from the perspective of a child of Ordonez-Quino’s age when these events occurred,” Thompson stated.

The court went on to find significant documentation of ongoing systemic racism and human rights violations against the Mayan Quiché community.

“The BIA appears not to have made any attempt to assay the evidence of current conditions in Guatemala for Ordonez-Quino specifically, and thereby failed to undertake the type of particularized analysis that our standards demand,” Thompson said.

If on remand the government can rebut his fear of future persecution, Ordonez-Quino may nevertheless be able to obtain discretionary asylum relief based on past persecution alone under the “humanitarian exception,” the 1st Circuit ruled.

“Finally, while we make no comment on the merits of Ordonez-Quino’s humanitarian asylum claim, we note that the BIA’s conclusory statement that his case ‘would not warrant humanitarian asylum based on the special considerations discussed in Matter of Chen, [20 I. & N. Dec. 16 (BIA 1989)],’ even if he had shown his injuries amounted to past persecution on account of a protected ground — without any discussion of the severity of the harms Ordonez-Quino suffered — would not withstand substantial evidence review,” Thompson pointed out.

The 33-page decision is Ordonez-Quino v. Holder, Lawyers Weekly No. 01-196-14.

Click here to read the full text of the opinion.