The Fourth Circuit has granted a petition for review and remanded to the Board of Immigration Appeals, holding that the Board abused its discretion in denying a motion to reopen an asylum case based on new death threats. The petitioner's asylum claim was based on persecution on account of membership in her husband's immediate family. After the Immigration Judge denied relief, she received threatening notes from suspected gang members calling her a "snitch" for reporting her husband's abduction. The Board denied reopening, the Fourth Circuit vacated, and the Board denied reopening again on remand.
The court held that the Board gave too much weight to the Immigration Judge's earlier findings, which predated the threats, and too little to the new evidence. The government conceded that gang members likely sent the notes, and the court found that the threats were intertwined with the petitioner's family ties. Relying on Cruz v. Sessions and Zavaleta-Policiano v. Sessions, it held that nexus can exist even where the persecutor has a stated non-family purpose, and it distinguished Cedillos-Cedillos v. Barr, where the petitioner merely happened upon a crime. A credible death threat can itself constitute persecution, and the Board's failure to consider the full context amounted to disregarding important aspects of the claim.
The full text of Fajardo-Rivas v. Blanche can be found here: https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/251280.P.pdf