Quant-Zepeda v. Blanche

── Quant-Zepeda v. Blanche ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Date: May 27, 2026 Category: General NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MAY 27 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MARIO JOSE QUANT-ZEPEDA; No. 25-691 JENNIFER IVETH JIMENEZ-VALDIVIA; JAKE STANLEY QUANT-JIMENEZ, Agency Nos. A240-182-106 Petitioners, A240-182-107 A240-182-108 v. TODD BLANCHE, Acting Attorney MEMORANDUM* General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted May 22, 2026** Pasadena, California Before: LEE, BUMATAY, and SUNG, Circuit Judges. Mario Jose Quant-Zepeda, his wife, and their minor son—all natives and * 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). citizens of Nicaragua—seek review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (BIA’s) decision affirming an Immigration Judge’s (IJ’s) denial of their applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). 1 We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D), and we deny the petition. We review the agency’s factual findings for substantial evidence. Ruiz- Colmenares v. Garland, 25 F.4th 742, 748 (9th Cir. 2022). These findings are “conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” Id. (emphasis omitted) (citation omitted). We review de novo questions of law. Id. 1. Asylum claim: “To be eligible for asylum, a petitioner has the burden to demonstrate a likelihood of ‘persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.’” Sharma v. Garland, 9 F.4th 1052, 1059 (9th Cir. 2021) (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A)). Substantial evidence supports the agency’s conclusion that Petitioners failed to establish past persecution. Before the IJ, Quant-Zepeda testified that he had been 1 Quant-Zepeda listed as derivatives on his asylum application both Jimenez- Valdivia and their minor son. Jimenez-Valdivia and her son each also filed separate applications for withholding of removal and CAT protection. Because the three applications contain the same operative facts, we refer to them collectively. 2 25-691 employed as a public schoolteacher in Nicaragua when the government placed conditions with which he did not agree on his employment. These included acts of loyalty to the Ortega administration, such as salary contributions and monitoring students and their families for behavior deemed “anti-government.” Quant-Zepeda also testified that he was able to resign without incident and soon found work in the private sector. The agency reasonably concluded that the mistreatment Quant-Zepeda suffered in the workplace did not rise to the severity of persecution. See Duran- Rodriguez v. Barr, 918 F.3d 1025, 1028 (9th Cir. 2019) (persecution is an “extreme concept that does not include every sort of treatment our society regards as offensive”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Sharma, 9 F.4th at 1062 (economic harm amounts to persecution in only those cases where harm threatens life or freed