By: Derek Hawkins//January 19, 2016//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Luis Gutierrez-Rostran v. Loretta E. Lynch
Case No.: 15-2216
Officials: BAUER, POSNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
Practice Area: Immigration – Asylum
Appellant fails to make timely application for asylum. However, denial of appeal not properly justified.
“The treatment by the immigration court and the Board of the cousin’s murder was too cursory to justify denial of Gutierrez-Rostran’s application for withholding of removal. There was evidence of violence by Sandinistas against liberal party members; the cousin was a liberal from a well-known liberal family; and Gutierrez-Rostran’s testimony, RuizSotelo’s testimony (including his testimony that public officials—a mayor and a police chief—had refused to protect him against Sandinista harassment), and letters of Gutierrez-Rostran’s parents and of PLI officials, made a prima facie showing that Gutierrez-Rostran would be in great danger were he to be returned to Nicaragua while the Sandinistas are in power. Although Gutierrez-Rostran’s parents, brothers, sisters, and uncles have not been persecuted, the parents are old (his father is 78) and neither they nor his one surviving uncle nor the sisters nor the brothers—who, remember, no longer live in Nicaragua—are politically active. An uncle of Gutierrez-Rostran who had been a liberal mayor was allowed to die in peace, but he too was old.”
Petition for Asylum Dismissed
Denial of Witholding of Removal Set Aside and Remanded