Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
784 F.3d 944 (2015)
Maydai Hernandez-Avalos, an El Salvadoran citizen, fled to the United States with her minor son and applied for asylum after heavily armed gang members repeatedly came to her home and threatened to kill her unless she let her son join their gang. The immigration judge denied asylum, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed on the theory that the persecution stemmed from her unwillingness to let her son join the gang, not from her relationship to him as such.
Whether persecution aimed at pressuring a mother to allow her son to join a gang counts as persecution "on account of" her membership in a nuclear family, when the underlying goal was recruiting the son rather than harming the family relationship itself.