The Fourth Circuit has granted a petition for review filed by a Salvadoran man who fled MS-13 retaliation after founding an anti-gang youth committee, holding both that his otherwise-late petition should be equitably tolled given the confusion created by the Supreme Court's intervening decision in Riley v. Bondi and that the agency committed multiple errors on the merits of his withholding and CAT claims.
Joining the Sixth and Seventh Circuits, the Court held that nothing in the text, structure, or history of 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(1) rebuts the ordinary presumption favoring equitable tolling of filing deadlines. On the merits, the Court held the agency ignored substantial record evidence that the gang imputed an anti-gang political opinion to the petitioner, erred in its particular social group analysis by requiring "public" visibility and analyzing terms like "witness" and "report" in isolation rather than together, and failed to meaningfully engage with corroborating evidence supporting his CAT claim.
The full text of Navarro Cerritos v. Blanche can be found here: https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/231897.P.pdf