Juan Luis Gamas-Vicente, a Guatemalan national who illegally entered the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 2014, sought asylum based on alleged persecution by the Mara 18 gang after refusing to join and his Mayan ethnicity. He testified that gang members armed with knives, machetes and nunchucks twice approached him to recruit him, physically assaulted him when he refused, and later raped his sister in retaliation. An immigration judge found him credible but denied his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture protection.
Circuit Judge Amul Thapar wrote that Gamas-Vicente "forfeited his arguments about the particular social groups he identified before the agency" and "failed to exhaust the three new groups he presents in his petition for review." The judge explained that before immigration authorities, Gamas-Vicente identified four social groups including "young Guatemalan men who refuse to join gangs," but in his federal appeal he mentioned "none of those groups" and instead proposed three entirely new categories. Thapar emphasized that the exhaustion requirement "require[s] precision" and courts must "enforce" the mandatory claim-processing rule.
The Board of Immigration Appeals had adopted and affirmed the immigration judge's decision, rejecting Gamas-Vicente's original four proposed social groups as sweeping "too broadly" and lacking sufficient particularity to be recognized as discrete groups by Guatemalan society. The immigration judge also found that the gang targeted Gamas-Vicente solely to "increase its wealth and power" rather than because of his group membership, and that his experiences didn't amount to persecution.
The ruling demonstrates the strict exhaustion requirements in immigration appeals and the precise formulation needed for particular social group claims. Without establishing membership in a persecuted social group, Gamas-Vicente cannot qualify for asylum or withholding of removal, making the court's analysis of his other arguments unnecessary. The decision reflects ongoing challenges faced by Central American asylum seekers trying to establish valid social group claims based on gang persecution.