Wenying Sun v. William Barr


NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 29 2020 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT WENYING SUN, No. 17-73038 Petitioner, Agency No. A089-779-636 v. MEMORANDUM* WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted June 1, 2020 Pasadena, California Before: FERNANDEZ and LEE, Circuit Judges, and ORRICK,** District Judge. Wenying Sun, a native and citizen of China, timely petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision dismissing her appeal from an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her application for asylum,1 withholding of * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable William Horsley Orrick, United States District Judge for the Northern District of California, sitting by designation. 1 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(1). removal,2 and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”).3 We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252. We grant the petition in part and remand to the BIA. Sun credibly testified to the following events at a hearing before the IJ. After 28 years of work at a government-owned factory in China, she and other workers were laid off with what they considered insufficient severance. When factory leadership rebuffed their attempts to discuss the terms of the layoffs, Sun and two other leaders organized a protest in front of the local municipal building, attended by 800 workers. After the guards refused their request to meet with government leaders, police arrived and arrested Sun and the other organizers. During the interrogation that followed, three officers accused Sun of “disrupting social order by, by organiz[ing] a riot to . . . launch [an] attack against the governmental agencies.” They punched, kicked, and electrically shocked her, then dragged her back to a cell where she was held for ten days. The IJ denied Sun’s application and the BIA affirmed, finding that she failed 2 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A). 3 United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100-20 (1988), 1465 U.N.T.S. 85, implemented at 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18. 2 17-73038 to establish a nexus between a protected activity and the harm she suffered.4 After Sun’s first petition for review, this court remanded to the BIA to consider the effect of Hu v. Holder, 652 F.3d 1011 (9th Cir. 2011). The BIA then reaffirmed its earlier decision, finding that by contrast with the petitioner in Hu, Sun was arrested after “yelling in front of 800 other co-workers during an illegal demonstration” and was “accused of disrupting the social order, not for the content of the protest.” Sun’s credible testimony compels the finding that the police officers who arrested and interrogated her were motivated by an imputed anti-government political opinion. See Hu, 652 F.3d at 1017–18; Baghdasaryan v. Holder, 592 F.3d 1018, 1023 (9th Cir. 2010). Although Sun was accused ...

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