The Ninth Circuit has determined that a minor and his mother experienced past harm rising to the level of persecution. “Javi’s persecution began soon after the men who had murdered his father were released from prison. Members of M-18, a violent street gang, located and identified Javi and began to follow him from school to his home. These men ‘knew everything about’ Javi and called him the ‘faggot son’ of Carlos. They surrounded Javi and threatened to kill him and Candelaria. The threat was not idle; one of the men who threatened Javi’s life was the same person who had been convicted of murdering his father. Candelaria testified credibly that M18 held a ‘grudge’ against Carlos’s family, including Javi, because of the family’s perceived cooperation with the police after Carlos’s murder. And days after M-18’s death threat, armed men broke into Javi and Candelaria’s home ‘looking for someone.’ Our caselaw does not require that a petitioner wait for the threat of violence to materialize before seeking the protections of asylum law.”
“Here, the death threat against Javi was specific, menacing, and credible. The fact that M-18 repeatedly stalked Javi and, days after threatening his life, broke into his home looking for someone while armed, shows that the threat of harm— and possibly death—was imminent.”
“Here, two expert witnesses evaluated Javi and concluded that ‘Javi’s experience of having his life threatened after losing his father has left a profound psychological impact,’ which ‘meets criteria for diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).’ They wrote that, since leaving El Salvador, ‘Javi has experienced regular nightmares and flashbacks involving the men who threatened him’ and otherwise ‘experiences post-trauma symptoms on a regular basis.’ The expert witnesses also documented other “‘intrusive symptoms’ that, taken together, ‘make it hard for [Javi] to focus in school, interrupt his sleep, and make it hard to heal as he is regularly re-experiencing the trauma.; In failing to address uncontradicted evidence that Javi currently experiences PTSD as a result of having his life threatened by the men who murdered his father, the agency ignored the actual harm Javi continues to suffer from his experience in El Salvador.”
The full text of Corpeno-Romero v. Garland can be found here: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/10/22/23-576.pdf