USCA4 Appeal: 20-2072 Doc: 51 Filed: 10/31/2022 Pg: 1 of 22 PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 20-2072 MAIRA JUDITH MADRID-MONTOYA, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Argued: September 13, 2022 Decided: October 31, 2022 Before AGEE, RICHARDSON, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges. Petition for review denied by published opinion. Judge Agee wrote the opinion, in which Judge Richardson and Judge Rushing joined. ARGUED: Aaron Robert Caruso, ABOD & CARUSO, LLC, Wheaton, Maryland, for Petitioner. Dawn S. Conrad, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Brian M. Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Mary Jane Candaux, Assistant Director, Remi Da Rocha-Afodu, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. USCA4 Appeal: 20-2072 Doc: 51 Filed: 10/31/2022 Pg: 2 of 22 AGEE, Circuit Judge: Maira Judith Madrid-Montoya (“Petitioner”) sought asylum and withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) after conceding removability from the United States during removal proceedings before an Immigration Judge (“IJ”). 1 The IJ denied both forms of relief, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirmed and entered a final order of removal. The crux of this appeal is the BIA’s determination that Petitioner failed to show the requisite nexus between her asserted protected ground and the persecution she suffered. Because that finding is supported by substantial evidence, we deny the petition for review. I. A. Petitioner is a Honduran native and citizen. From 2008 to 2013, she and her daughter lived with Germain Puentes Urbina. He was the father of Petitioner’s daughter and, though Petitioner and Urbina were never formally married, Petitioner referred to him as her “husband.” E.g., A.R. 74. Urbina owned about twenty hectares of land upon which he farmed corn and beans. The residence that Urbina, Petitioner, and their daughter occupied was also on that land. In August 2013, narcotraffickers from a local Honduran gang told Urbina to “leave the area” 1 Petitioner’s daughter filed a rider application for asylum and withholding of removal. Since her application rises and falls upon the success of her mother’s, we adopt the parties’ convention of referring to Madrid-Montoya as a singular “Petitioner.” 2 USCA4 Appeal: 20-2072 Doc: 51 Filed: 10/31/2022 Pg: 3 of 22 so that they could use the entire twenty hectares and adjacent properties to build a landing strip for their drug trafficking operations. A.R. 81. Urbina refused to leave. Five days later, the narcotraffickers returned to the property and killed him. Fearing for her and her daughter’s lives, Petitioner fled to her aunt’s house in a city two hours away. The record shows that Urbina was only one of several landowners the narcotraffickers targeted. Petitioner testified 2 that around the same time as Urbina’s murder, narcotraffickers forced “several” of Urbina’s neighbors off their land so they could build their desired landing strip. A.R. 103. Those neighbors vacated their land as directed, and …
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