Norma Angelica Chavez Olivera v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
NORMA ANGELICA CHAVEZ
OLIVERA,
Petitioner,
v.
WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General,
Respondent.
No. 17-70038
Agency No. A098-024-610
MEMORANDUM*
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Argued and Submitted March 5, 2019
Phoenix, Arizona
Before: IKUTA and FRIEDLAND, Circuit Judges, and BLOCK,** District Judge.
Norma Chavez Olivera, a Mexican citizen and national, seeks review of a
decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming an immigration
judge’s denial of withholding of removal and relief under the Convention Against
Torture (“CAT”). Reviewing the BIA’s decision for substantial evidence, Gu v.
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
** The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge for the
Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.
FILED
MAR 18 2019
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

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Gonzales, 454 F.3d 1014, 1018 (9th Cir. 2006), we hold that the evidence does not
compel the conclusion that its determinations were incorrect. We deny the
petition.
First, substantial evidence supports the BIA’s conclusion that Olivera has
not established that her political opinion or any other protected ground would be at
least “a reason” for potential persecution in Mexico. See Barajas-Romero v.
Lynch, 846 F.3d 351, 358–59 (9th Cir. 2017). The evidence does not compel the
conclusion that Olivera expressed a political opinion by filing inquiries with
government agencies and otherwise investigating her husband’s disappearance, nor
that her potential persecutors imputed such an opinion to her and then acted upon
it. Absent a nexus between a protected ground and potential persecution, Olivera
cannot secure withholding of removal, see 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3), so we need not
consider her other arguments regarding that form of relief.
Second, substantial evidence supports the BIA’s conclusion that Olivera is
not more likely than not to be tortured upon return to Mexico. Although Olivera
received threatening telephone calls, she lived in Mexico without suffering any
physical harm for more than eighteen months after her husband’s abduction.
Olivera’s country conditions evidence documented a general problem of torture
and human rights abuses in Mexico, including at the hands of state actors, but
those facts combined with the threats she received do not compel the conclusion

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that she would face a sufficiently particularized threat of torture to warrant CAT
relief. See Dhital v. Mukasey, 532 F.3d 1044, 1051–52 (9th Cir. 2008).
The petition is DENIED.

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