Aguilar-mejia v. Holder
| Citation | 616 F.3d 699 |
| Decision Date | 06 August 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 09-2673.,09-2673. |
| Parties | Guillermo AGUILAR-MEJIA, Petitioner, v. Eric H. HOLDER, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Matthew A. Katz (argued), Katz Law Office, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.
Jesse M. Bless (argued), OIL, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Respondent.
Claudia Valenzuela, Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center, Chicago, IL, for Amicus Curiae.
Before BAUER and WOOD, Circuit Judges, and KENNELLY, District Judge. *
Guillermo Aguilar-Mejia, also known as Williams Oswaldo Aguilar-Mejia, is fighting removal from the United States. He came to this country in the late 1980s, and was removed to Mexico in 1995. He returned shortly thereafter and has remained here ever since. Life is hard for Aguilar-Mejia. He was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and, later, with a debilitating viral disease that causes the brain's white matter to deteriorate. Thankfully, Aguilar-Mejia has found the support of various organizations and persons in the Chicago area that have provided him with the medical, economic, and psychological support he needs. After a 2008 arrest, however, the Department of Homeland Security sought to have him removed based on, among other grounds, a previous conviction for drug possession.
Aguilar-Mejia did not challenge the charges before the Immigration Judge (“IJ”), but he argued that he qualified for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). Aguilar-Mejia focused on the threat of persecution against perceived homosexuals and persons suffering from AIDS. An IJ in Chicago found Aguilar-Mejia removable and denied his application for withholding of removal because he failed to establish a pattern or practice of persecution against those groups in the designated countries. The IJ also denied the CAT claim. Aguilar-Mejia appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), but the BIA affirmed the IJ. Now he has filed a petition for review with this court. Aguilar-Mejia faces a troubling predicament, but our review is tightly constrained. Because we conclude that we lack jurisdiction over Aguilar-Mejia's factual and legal claims, we dismiss the petition for review.
Aguilar-Mejia was born in Colombia and raised in Guatemala. He was abused by his mother and stepfather. In 1988 or 1989, Aguilar-Mejia left Guatemala and traveled through Mexico to the United States, eventually settling in Chicago. In 1995, Aguilar-Mejia was convicted of possession of a controlled substance and removed to Mexico. Sometime thereafter he reentered the United States. He was arrested again in 1999, but stayed in the country.
In the years that followed, Aguilar-Mejia began to experience various symptoms that he was not able to understand for a time. In 2005, the unfortunate truth emerged: he was infected with HIV and had developed AIDS. Later, he was diagnosed with Progressive Multi-focal Leukoencephalopathy (“PML”), a rare and often fatal viral disease characterized by progressive damage of the brain's white matter. This is a life-threatening disease, as the description from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke makes clear:
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is caused by the reactivation of a common virus in the central nervous system of immune-compromised individuals.... PML is most common among individuals with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Studies estimate that prior to effective antiretroviral therapy, as many as 5 percent of people with AIDS eventually developed
PML. For them, the disease was most often rapidly fatal.
With current HIV therapy, which effectively restores immune system function, as many as half of all HIV-PML patients survive, although they sometimes have an inflammatory reaction in the regions affected by PML. The symptoms of PML are the result of an infection that causes the loss of white matter (which is made up of myelin, a substance th[at] surrounds and protects nerve fibers) in multiple areas of the brain. Without the protection of myelin, nerve signals can't travel successfully from the brain to the rest of the body. Typical symptoms associated with PML are diverse, since they are related to the location and amount of damage in the brain, and evolve over the course of several days to several weeks. The most prominent symptoms are clumsiness; progressive weakness; and visual, speech, and sometimes, personality changes. The progression of deficits leads to life-threatening disability and death over weeks to months.
See http:// www. ninds. nih. gov/ disorders/ pml/ pml. htm (last visited Aug. 3, 2010).
Aguilar-Mejia has many of the symptoms that the Institute described. He has had problems with his memory, has been diagnosed with clinical depression, has experienced various other health problems including a severe stroke followed by a five-day coma, and has attempted suicide at least once. The record in this case is uneven because Aguilar-Mejia's memory problems make it difficult to determine all of the relevant facts.
In 2008, Aguilar-Mejia was arrested for possession of false identification and drinking alcohol in public. Aguilar-Mejia tried to excuse his conduct by saying that he needed the ID in order to obtain an apartment. Following that arrest, the government sought to remove him to Guatemala, Colombia, or Mexico. It offered four bases for the proposed action: seeking admission within 10 years of previous removal, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(9)(A)(ii); entering the United States without inspection, id. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i); commission of a crime involving moral turpitude, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I); and commission of a controlled-substance offense, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(II).
Aguilar-Mejia did not challenge these charges; in fact, he conceded removability based on the crime of moral turpitude and the controlled-substance offense. Instead, Aguilar-Mejia requested withholding of removal and protection under the CAT. His arguments focused exclusively on his fear of future persecution based on his membership in two groups: perceived homosexuals and persons with AIDS. Aguilar-Mejia presented a voluminous written record, called five witnesses, and testified himself. The evidence established Aguilar-Mejia's diagnoses of HIV/AIDS and PML, his dire and deteriorating condition, the extensive medical treatment he required to stave off death, the severe difficulty of accessing that treatment in the countries to which the government was proposing to remove him, and the societal stigma and mistreatment of people belonging to the social groups he had identified. At all times, Aguilar-Mejia (through counsel) argued that there was a pattern or practice of persecution directed at the social groups he had identified; he did not assert that there was any reason that he would be singled out for persecution more than others in his groups. When the IJ asked Aguilar-Mejia's counsel directly whether his claim was limited to the “pattern-or-practice” theory, counsel answered in the affirmative.
On February 13, 2009, the IJ issued an oral decision denying relief. The IJ first found that Aguilar-Mejia was removable on all four charges. Aguilar-Mejia does not challenge any of these grounds for removal in his petition.
The IJ next turned to Aguilar-Mejia's request for withholding of removal. Because Aguilar-Mejia did not present evidence of past persecution, the IJ looked only to future persecution based on the “pattern or practice” of persecution of persons perceived to be homosexuals and persons with AIDS in the countries designated for removal. The IJ determined that Aguilar-Mejia qualified as a member of both groups, and that these groups constituted “social groups” for purposes of the withholding-of-removal regulations. The IJ was sympathetic to Aguilar-Mejia's case, but in the end he decided that there was not enough evidence of a pattern or practice of persecution to warrant withholding of removal. Although the IJ acknowledged the difficulty Aguilar-Mejia may face in obtaining the necessary medications upon removal, he decided that these circumstances did not establish the threat of persecution required for withholding of removal. The IJ also found that the CAT was inapplicable because Aguilar-Mejia did not establish that the governments of the target countries would commit or acquiesce to the commission of torture against members of either social group. The IJ noted that Aguilar-Mejia was not eligible for asylum, because he did not file his application within one year of entry into the United States. (There was no evidence of changed country conditions in the proposed recipient countries.)
Aguilar-Mejia appealed to the BIA, again arguing the pattern-or-practice theory for withholding of removal. The BIA agreed with the IJ. Aguilar-Mejia has now filed a petition for review, with the help of the National Immigrant Justice Center (“NIJC”) as amicus curiae. He asks this court to reject the IJ's and BIA's decisions on withholding of removal, either based on the sufficiency of the evidence or a claim of legal error. Aguilar-Mejia did not raise any issues particular to the CAT or asylum on appeal to the BIA, nor does he raise those issues in this court. We conclude that we lack jurisdiction to review the sufficiency of the evidence under the statute, and that Aguilar-Mejia failed to preserve the claim of legal error he raises in this court.
An applicant for withholding of removal must establish that “his or her life or freedom would be threatened in the proposed country of removal on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(b). Past persecution creates a rebuttable presumption of the threat of future persecution. Id. § 1208.16(b)(1). If the applicant cannot show past persecution, then he or she may...
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