Mendoza-Pablo

facts testified to by Mendoza-Pablo. See Ladha v. INS, 215 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2000) (“[W]hen an alien credibly testifies to certain facts, those facts are deemed true, and the question remaining to be answered becomes whether these facts, and their reasonable inferences, satisfy the elements of the claim for relief.”). For present purposes, this also includes informa- tion Mendoza-Pablo credibly testified he learned from his mother about events surrounding his birth and early years. 1214 MENDOZA-PABLO v. HOLDER Id. at 150.

During this conflict, the Guatemalan government, “regard- ing the entire civilian population of many villages as members of guerrilla groups,” sought to “physically eliminat[e]” all the people residing in those villages, including children. See Gua- temala: Never Again! The Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala, at 32 (Greta Tovar Siebentritt, trans.) At some point in 1982, when Mendoza- Pablo’s mother was eight months pregnant with him, Guate- malan government soldiers, having accused the residents of Todos Santos of aiding the guerrillas, burned the village to the ground, massacring many of the village’s…

concurring in part, and dissenting in part:

I agree in principle that an infant may be subjected to persecution. However, I do not agree that the facts of this case compel a conclusion that Petitioner Juan Ubaldo Mendoza-Pablo was subjected to persecution as an infant. I respectfully dissent.

Mendoza-Pablo was informed by his mother that he was born several weeks premature, and was malnourished because of the family’s forced retreat into the mountains, where food was scarce. When Mendoza-Pablo was approximately three months old, Mendoza-Pablo’s family fled to Mexico. In Mexico, Mendoza-Pablo was unable to attend school and experienced difficulty in finding employment. *1316 Mendoza-Pablo also reported frequent illness and recurring nightmares.

When asked why he was seeking asylum, Mendoza-Pablo responded, “I’m applying for asylum because I don’t have papers or anything ... I don’t have where to livefsic]. I don’t have anywhere to go....” 1 When asked what would happen if he returned to Guatemala, Mendoza-Pablo replied that he “could be killed or other things that happened to[his] family could also happen to [him].” However, when asked the identity of his potential killer(s),…

Opinion by Judge RAKOFF; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge RAWLINSON.

OPINION

Petitioner Juan Ubaldo Mendoza-Pablo petitions for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) on the ground, inter alia, that Mendoza-Pablo had not been the victim of past persecution because he was never “personally challenged or confronted by any potential persecutor.” We grant the petition.

The pertinent facts are as follows. 1 Mendoza-Pablo is a member of the Mam Mayan group, an indigenous ethnic group whose members live predominantly in Guatemala. His family originally hailed from the village of Todos Santos. In 1982, when Mendoza-Pablo was born, the Guatemalan government was engaged in a fierce and largely one-sided civil war with insurgent groups predominantly of Mayan ethnicity. In Jorge-Tzoc v. Gonzales, 435 F.3d 146 (2d Cir.2006), the Second Circuit, citing the Report of the “Commission for Historical Clarification” (which was established by the June 23, 1994 Oslo Accord as part of the United Nations-brokered peace process), described…