United States Second Circuit

In a petition for review of a denial of petitioners' asylum application, the petition is granted where, instead of evaluating the claim against the backdrop of Guatemala's volatile political history, the Immigration Judge (IJ) short-circuited the analysis and dismissed petitioner's claim of political persecution by presuming that petitioner was targeted for his resistance to being recruited by corrupt officers, which the IJ believed to lack any political dimension, and for reporting the crimes of rogue police officers, which the IJ considered an occupational hazard of petitioner's job, and thus again non-political.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/02/2010
• Published 03/02/2010

Judges

Court

• United States Second Circuit

Counsel