Alvarado-Chicas
Alvarado-Chicas v. Immigration & Naturalization Service
Opinion
Lead Opinion
MEMORANDUM **
*872 Noemi Alvarado-Chicas, a native and citizen of El Salvador, petitions for review of a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying her relief from deportation. We conclude that Alvarado-Chicas failed to demonstrate her eligibility for asylum, and thus we deny her petition.
As a petitioner seeking to establish “persecution on account of ... political opinion,” see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101 (a)(42)(A) & 1158(a), Alvarado-Chicas was required to prove that she held a political opinion (or that her persecutors believed she held a political opinion), and that she was persecuted because of it. See Navas v. INS, 217 F.3d 646, 656 (9th Cir.2000). Alvarado-Chicas failed to do this. Although she testified that she had been the victim of violence during three guerrilla offensives in El Salvador between late 1989 and early 1991, she failed to present any evidence that this violence was motivated by her political opinion, or that she even had a political opinion.
Alvarado-Chicas maintains that the guerrillas imputed a political opinion to her because she had a brother in the military, and because she resisted the guerrillas’ recruitment efforts. There was, however,…