Audel Hernandez Avellaneda v. Pamela Bondi

── Audel Hernandez Avellaneda v. Pamela Bondi ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: April 08, 2026 Category: General NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS APR 8 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT AUDEL HERNANDEZ AVELLANEDA; No. 21-70145 RUBI VALDEZ GARCIA; Y. H. V., Agency Nos. A208-927-022 Petitioners, A208-927-017 A208-927-018 v. PAMELA BONDI, Attorney General, MEMORANDUM* Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted April 8, 2026** Before: FRIEDLAND, MILLER, and COLLINS, Circuit Judges. Petitioners Audel Hernandez Avellaneda, Rubi Valdez Garcia, and their minor son are natives and citizens of Mexico. Petitioners seek review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming the denial by an immigration judge (“IJ”) of their applications for asylum, withholding of removal, * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”).1 We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252, and we deny the petition. “Where, as here, the BIA summarily adopts the IJ’s decision without opinion pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(4), we ‘review the IJ’s decision as if it were the BIA’s decision.’” Ren v. Holder, 648 F.3d 1079, 1083 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting Zheng v. Ashcroft, 397 F.3d 1139, 1143 (9th Cir. 2005)). We review legal questions de novo. Guo v. Sessions, 897 F.3d 1208, 1212 (9th Cir. 2018). “We review denials of asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT relief for substantial evidence and will uphold a denial supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence on the record considered as a whole.” Id. (quoting Yali Wang v. Sessions, 861 F.3d 1003, 1007 (9th Cir. 2017)) (quotation marks omitted). 1. Petitioners’ opening brief fails to meaningfully challenge the agency’s conclusion that they did not show that the Mexican government was unwilling or unable to protect them from harm, which is dispositive of both their asylum and withholding of removal claims. See United States v. Graf, 610 F.3d 1148, 1166 (9th Cir. 2010) (“Arguments made in passing and not supported by citations to the record or to case authority are generally deemed waived.”). Nor do Petitioners 1 Valdez Garcia and their son also applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection, premised on the same facts as Hernandez Avellaneda’s application. 2 address the IJ’s denial of humanitarian asylum. Issues that are not raised or not supported by argument in the opening brief are forfeited. See Martinez-Serrano v. INS, 94 F.3d 1256, 1259–60 (9th Cir. 1996). We accordingly deny the petitions as to those claims. 2. Substantial evidence supports the agency’s conclusion that Petitioners are not eligible for relief under CAT. The agency reasonably concluded that Petitioners did not experience torture in the past, and although they experienced some violence, there was also evidence that Petitioners could relocate to an area of the country where they would be unlikely to face torture or further violence in the future. Thus, the evidence does not compel us to conclude that Petitioners met “the high threshold of establishing that it is mo