The First Circuit has rejected the agency’s determination that an asylum applicant’s proposed social group was impermissibly circular simply because it referenced harm in its definition. “If an applicant's proffered social group, examined without consideration of the potentially circular language, shares independent socially distinctive characteristics, then neither the IJ nor the BIA may reject the group as legally invalid without further substantive analysis.”
The full text of Espinoza-Ochoa v. Garland can be found here: