Edis Gloribel Orellana-Lara v. LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
EDIS GLORIBEL ORELLANA-LARA,
Petitioner,
v.
LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General,
Respondent.
No. 12-73221
Agency No. A094-798-432
MEMORANDUM*
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Argued and Submitted March 17, 2016
San Francisco, California
Before: NOONAN, GOULD, and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges.
Edis Gloribel Orellana-Lara, a citizen and native of El Salvador, applied for
asylum after she was arrested entering the United States without authorization at
the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. Orellana-Lara contends that she suffered past
persecution and had a well-founded fear of future persecution because of her
membership in a particular social group. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158 (describing
FILED
MAR 28 2016
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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eligibility for asylum); 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42) (defining “refugee”). Orellana-Lara
defined her particular social group as “young women in El Salvador who have
been solicited by gangs.” The IJ denied her claim for asylum, and the BIA
dismissed her appeal.
In rejecting Orellana-Lara’s claim, the BIA first stated that “Salvadoran
youth who have resisted gang membership based on their own personal, moral, or
religious opposition to gang values and activities do not constitute a particular
social group.” Having excised gang opposition from Orellana-Lara’s proposed
social group, the BIA then declined to consider whether “women” or “young
women” was a protected group because Orellana-Lara had not shown that her
attacks bore a “nexus” to her gender.
We need not decide whether the BIA correctly determined that Orellana-
Lara’s attacks were not on account of her gender. We have recently held that
“persons taking concrete steps to oppose gang membership and gang authority”
may constitute a particular social group. Pirir-Boc v. Holder, 750 F.3d 1077, 1084
(9th Cir. 2014) (remanding for BIA to address this question); see also Henriquez-
Rivas v. Holder, 707 F.3d 1081 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc). The BIA has also
recently determined that “Honduran youth who have been actively recruited by
gangs but who have refused to join because they oppose the gangs” could
2

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constitute a particular social group. Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I. & N. Dec. 227, 228,
252–53 (B.I.A. 2014) (remanding for IJ to address this question). These cases
show that the BIA should not have disregarded Orellana-Lara’s opposition to gang
membership and limited Orellana-Lara’s proposed social group to just “‘women’
or ‘young women.’”
Considering the social group Orellana-Lara proposed, “young women in El
Salvador who have been solicited by gangs,” we conclude that the record compels
a finding that Orellana-Lara was persecuted on account of her membership in this
group. The IJ found that Orellana-Lara was initially approached by four members
of the Mara Salvatrucha gang who asked her to join.1 Orellana-Lara then faced a
series of threatening or violent encounters with some of the same gang members,
and the IJ found that “she was persecuted nearly every week by these same
individuals, wanting her to join the gang.” This evidence establishes that Orellana-
Lara was persecuted on account of her membership in the social group that she had
proposed.
As in Pirir-Boc, the record evidence is not sufficient for us to determine
whether Orellana-Lara’s proposed social group meets “the revised standard” set
1 The IJ found that Orellana-Lara was “entirely credible and worthy of
belief.”
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forth by the BIA in decisions such as M-E-V-G-, supra, and Matter of W-G-R-, 26
I. & N. Dec. 208 (B.I.A. 2014). See Pirir-Boc, 750 F.3d at 1084. We grant
Orellana-Lara’s petition for review and remand to the BIA to reconsider Orellana-
Lara’s application for asylum in light of the cases cited above and any other recent
case law that bears on the question whether “young women in El Salvador who
have been solicited by gangs” constitutes a particular social group for asylum
purposes.
PETITION GRANTED and REMANDED.
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