[00:00:07] Speaker 03:
The Louisville check, is that the way I said?

[00:00:11] Speaker 01:
Lebelzik, yeah.

[00:00:12] Speaker 03:
Okay, sorry about that.

[00:00:13] Speaker 03:
No problem.

[00:00:15] Speaker 03:
Please proceed.

[00:00:16] Speaker 01:
Good morning, and may it please the court.

[00:00:18] Speaker 01:
Colin Lebelzik of Perkins Cooey on behalf of petitioners Lester Lopez, his wife Alba, and their daughter Leslie.

[00:00:25] Speaker 01:
I'd like to reserve two minutes for a bundle.

[00:00:28] Speaker 03:
Keep your eye on the clock.

[00:00:30] Speaker 01:
I want to start by highlighting what no party here disputes.

[00:00:34] Speaker 01:
that the family protested against the Nicaraguan government and was immediately targeted in a brutal crackdown that left over 300 of their fellow protesters dead.

[00:00:44] Speaker 01:
The mistreatment that the family suffered escalated over time.

[00:00:48] Speaker 01:
It started when Alba began receiving daily text messages threatening her with imprisonment and torture if she continued protesting.

[00:00:57] Speaker 01:
Then Alba and Lester had a physical confrontation with paramilitary forces where they were threatened again and robbed.

[00:01:04] Speaker 03:
Council, let me ask you this.

[00:01:05] Speaker 03:
We've read the brief.

[00:01:07] Speaker 03:
So can we focus on the concept of the totality of the circumstances issue?

[00:01:14] Speaker 03:
As I read the record, the IJ clearly referred to individual incidents, but did not, if you will, consider the totality of the circumstance.

[00:01:27] Speaker 03:
All of the phrase was used.

[00:01:31] Speaker 03:
Since the court used the term

[00:01:34] Speaker 03:
totality of the circumstances, has it complied with law?

[00:01:39] Speaker 01:
So I think it's murky at best whether the IJ actually completed cumulative effect review.

[00:01:48] Speaker 01:
As you note, he said the injury to Lester by itself was not sufficient.

[00:01:55] Speaker 01:
The detention of Alba's father alone was not sufficient.

[00:01:59] Speaker 01:
And then the third basis, he says that the threats that Alba received

[00:02:04] Speaker 01:
and the psychological harm that she suffered alone was not sufficient based on the totality of the circumstances.

[00:02:11] Speaker 01:
And I think, you know, when you read the IJ's opinion, I think a reasonable reading of it is that that totality of the circumstances language was limited to the third basis of harm only, to the threats to Alba,

[00:02:27] Speaker 01:
at the totality of circumstances around those threats and around her psychological harm.

[00:02:34] Speaker 01:
But I want to emphasize here that even if you disagree, that if you think that the IJ did enough here by using that language, that's not going to be enough for the government to win here.

[00:02:47] Speaker 01:
Because under a de novo standard of review, which should be applied here, I understand that there's a lot of confusion in the Ninth Circuit.

[00:02:54] Speaker 01:
But I think the standard of review

[00:02:57] Speaker 03:
That was a nice kiss.

[00:03:01] Speaker 01:
So I think that a lot of your colleagues have written about this issue extensively.

[00:03:07] Speaker 01:
It's created a circuit split where you have six circuits who are saying that de novo review applies.

[00:03:13] Speaker 01:
You have five saying that substantial evidence review applies.

[00:03:17] Speaker 01:
But I think if you look at the INA, it becomes a pretty clear question of statutory interpretation.

[00:03:24] Speaker 01:
Because the INA provides that administrative findings of fact are reviewed for substantial evidence.

[00:03:31] Speaker 01:
And I submit that the question here, whether when you have undisputed facts that are being applied to a legal standard, that is not an administrative finding of fact.

[00:03:43] Speaker 01:
Why are they undisputed?

[00:03:46] Speaker 01:
So the underlying facts regarding what happened to petitioners, those are kind of the historical facts, the who, what, when, where, why, of what happened to them.

[00:03:57] Speaker 01:
The IJ found those facts, found the petitioners to be credible and... So your view is that, are you relying on the deemed true credible rule?

[00:04:07] Speaker 01:
So I'm relying on the fact that the IJ's opinion assumes that all of these facts that the petitioners testified to.

[00:04:16] Speaker 02:
Well, I'm not sure if that's true, because especially with respect to the sort of double hearsay issue with what the, I can't remember, one of the petitioners' fathers or father-in-law,

[00:04:29] Speaker 02:
You know, the I.J.

[00:04:31] Speaker 02:
does appear to be somewhat skeptical.

[00:04:34] Speaker 02:
Would you agree that the I.J.

[00:04:35] Speaker 02:
seems to be somewhat skeptical that some of those things happened?

[00:04:38] Speaker 01:
I don't know if that's the way I read the I.J.'

[00:04:43] Speaker 01:
's opinion.

[00:04:44] Speaker 01:
I think the I.J.

[00:04:45] Speaker 01:
found them credible, listed off, you know, kind of gave a read.

[00:04:49] Speaker 02:
But it's kind of a weird deal because if I were to tell you that, you know, Judge Smith told me that Judge Gilman told me that Judge Wardlaw told him that Judge Stone

[00:04:57] Speaker 02:
You know, if I give you a long train like that, you can say I'm credible and that you don't think I'm a liar, right?

[00:05:03] Speaker 02:
But you might be skeptical.

[00:05:04] Speaker 02:
The longer that train gets of hearsay, you might be skeptical that there might be a break in there some way, that maybe perhaps even Judge Smith didn't quite understand Judge Gilman, or maybe it just, even without thinking anybody's not credible.

[00:05:19] Speaker 02:
And so that seems to be what the Supreme Court, one of the issues the Supreme Court was getting at when it says that you can be credible,

[00:05:25] Speaker 02:
But you're not necessarily persuasive or it doesn't necessarily, you know, the weight of how much that testimony is given can vary.

[00:05:33] Speaker 02:
And here, even though they might have thought, well, I didn't catch you guys in a lie, but I'm still not sure I believe this double hearsay of all the stuff that happened to your father.

[00:05:42] Speaker 02:
And there seems to be some indication of that because it does, the IJ does express some

[00:05:49] Speaker 02:
uncertainty as to whether these things happen to the father.

[00:05:52] Speaker 02:
Would you agree with that?

[00:05:53] Speaker 01:
I don't know if I saw that closely in the I.J.'

[00:05:56] Speaker 01:
's opinion.

[00:05:57] Speaker 01:
I think that the I.J., you know, he marched through everything that happened.

[00:06:02] Speaker 01:
The government, of course, had a, you know, they had a chance to demonstrate adverse credibility, and that didn't happen.

[00:06:09] Speaker 01:
So I think that here we do have a set of facts that are being applied to a legal principle.

[00:06:14] Speaker 02:
He says the government officials detained the correspondent's father for unknown reasons, right?

[00:06:18] Speaker 02:
But they said that our father told them these things, right?

[00:06:22] Speaker 02:
So you either have to think that the IJ just completely missed that, even though the IJ recited that earlier in the very same opinion, or you have to think that the IJ is basically saying, I'm not sure what the real reason here was.

[00:06:36] Speaker 02:
Well, I think the IJ goes on to, even though he does say unknown reasons, he does go through and say that... He says, alternatively, even if it was for political reasons, you still lose, but that also just seems to indicate the IJ has some skepticism that the whole story about the father is exactly what actually factually went down, which is really, I'm just basically saying,

[00:07:00] Speaker 02:
Was the IJ required to believe that everything they said was factually true just because they were deemed credible?

[00:07:08] Speaker 02:
And it seems like that was your position, but I'm not sure.

[00:07:10] Speaker 01:
Yeah, I think I would say that, of course, there is a middle ground between an express adverse credibility finding and a IJ crediting every single thing that the petitioner said.

[00:07:28] Speaker 02:
Well, not under our deemed crew of credible rule.

[00:07:30] Speaker 02:
Do you think that still exists in our circuit or not?

[00:07:33] Speaker 01:
Yes, I believe it does.

[00:07:34] Speaker 02:
You don't think Ming Dai killed that Supreme Court?

[00:07:37] Speaker 01:
Oh, yes.

[00:07:38] Speaker 01:
I believe that that, right, of course, the Supreme Court... Antimously.

[00:07:42] Speaker 01:
Yes, that is of course binding law here, but I think that another Supreme Court decision that you can look to for the standard of review is the Gaspria case that was from 2012.

[00:07:54] Speaker 01:
from 2020 where the Supreme Court said that in the INA, the phrase question of law is something that's encompassed in that phrase is the application of facts to a legal standard.

[00:08:07] Speaker 01:
And I think that's what you have here in persecution.

[00:08:10] Speaker 02:
No, but the reason this matter is I'm having a discussion.

[00:08:12] Speaker 02:
We've said that the cumulative effects is a legal quid, which makes sense, but only if you understand that the facts that feed into that

[00:08:23] Speaker 02:
We still give deference.

[00:08:25] Speaker 02:
We still give, and I think we said that too, that there's substantial evidence.

[00:08:28] Speaker 02:
So I think the government's position here would be, well, it depends what facts you're feeding in there.

[00:08:34] Speaker 02:
If you're feeding in that everything that these people said is absolute gospel and we know that it 100% happened that way, that's one thing.

[00:08:42] Speaker 02:
But it's another thing if we think that the IJ was able to put different weight on those facts and to find certain statements

[00:08:53] Speaker 02:
more or less persuasive about what happened.

[00:08:55] Speaker 02:
And I thought that we were more in that latter land, but not if the deemed true of credible rule exists.

[00:09:01] Speaker 01:
So the deemed true of credible, just to be clear, that rule after Ming Dai, as you said, does no longer exist.

[00:09:07] Speaker 03:
But let me interject here, because this is an important discussion, I think, amongst the panel.

[00:09:12] Speaker 03:
Ming Dai doesn't say anything about a situation where the IJA has expressly found that the petitioner is credible and there's nothing to the contrary, right?

[00:09:22] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:09:23] Speaker 03:
So if that's what we have here and the relevant facts, Ming Dai doesn't apply, right?

[00:09:27] Speaker 03:
That's right.

[00:09:29] Speaker 01:
And I think you can look to some of your colleagues concurrences.

[00:09:32] Speaker 01:
I think another big point on the standard of review is that the BIA itself, when they're reviewing an IJ's opinion, when they're deciding whether there's been past persecution here, they review that determination de novo.

[00:09:47] Speaker 01:
So I think it would be quite strange if when that exact same question comes up from this court, a different standard applies.

[00:09:57] Speaker 01:
I think that Judge Collins wrote this in the Fond case.

[00:10:00] Speaker 01:
He said that it would be strange indeed if something that was considered a legal question below was transmogrified into a factual question above.

[00:10:10] Speaker 01:
And I think that's what we have here.

[00:10:11] Speaker 01:
And I just want to see my time is running out.

[00:10:14] Speaker 03:
But it's actually out I'll tell you what Since we've asked a lot of questions.

[00:10:20] Speaker 03:
We'll give you a little bit of rebuttal time So let's hear from the government and then we'll give you a couple of minutes to respond.

[00:10:25] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:10:26] Speaker 03:
Thank you All right, ms.

[00:10:31] Speaker 00:
Vic right Good morning your honors Lindsay Vic on behalf of the Attorney General

[00:10:40] Speaker 00:
I'd like to start by talking a little bit about the standard of review here.

[00:10:45] Speaker 00:
And so what we're looking at is we're looking at the IJ's past persecution determination and specifically the seriousness of harm prong.

[00:10:53] Speaker 00:
And that seriousness of harm prong is a fact-based inquiry.

[00:10:58] Speaker 00:
So we're looking at whether there is substantial evidence or whether the record compels reversal on that serious harm finding.

[00:11:06] Speaker 00:
And the court should find here that the record does not compel reversal.

[00:11:11] Speaker 03:
And that is because... What's your best argument for that?

[00:11:15] Speaker 00:
My best argument is that this case involves three isolated sporadic incidents over the course of three years.

[00:11:27] Speaker 00:
And they happened to Alba and Lester who are the two respondents.

[00:11:32] Speaker 00:
And actually the IJ was very generous in including the analysis of what happened to Alba's father because he was unrelated to their claims.

[00:11:40] Speaker 04:
Her testimony is that they threatened that if he didn't stop participating in marches in his family, didn't they were going to kill him and his family, which would include Lester and Alba.

[00:11:53] Speaker 00:
Well, the threat didn't explicitly include Lester and Alba.

[00:11:58] Speaker 00:
We don't know that it was just more than hyperbole.

[00:12:01] Speaker 00:
All we know is that he came.

[00:12:03] Speaker 04:
From the record, it sounds like no, they would kill his family.

[00:12:07] Speaker 00:
There was one isolated death threat when he was detained.

[00:12:12] Speaker 04:
How many death threats do you need?

[00:12:15] Speaker 00:
Well, I'm just saying in this case, we have Alba's father who was arrested for unknown reasons for something he possibly did.

[00:12:25] Speaker 00:
And it was not in connection with either Alba or Lester.

[00:12:30] Speaker 00:
And then when he was in detention, he was not beaten.

[00:12:33] Speaker 00:
He was not harmed.

[00:12:35] Speaker 00:
And then he says that one of the police officers said, you know, if you do this again, I'll kill you or your family.

[00:12:42] Speaker 00:
And again, we don't know that that is specific or particular to Alba or Lester.

[00:12:49] Speaker 00:
And so... What would it be?

[00:12:52] Speaker 04:
I mean, he wasn't talking about you or me.

[00:12:55] Speaker 04:
Family, that would have to be Lester and Alba, wouldn't it?

[00:12:58] Speaker 00:
Well, I think considering all the circumstances, we don't have any other

[00:13:02] Speaker 00:
threats towards Alba's father, but we also don't have a pattern of persecution linking the three people together.

[00:13:12] Speaker 04:
What about the rock that was thrown at Lester's foot or ankle and disabled him for three months?

[00:13:19] Speaker 00:
Yes, so that was one instance to Lester and so for his claim of harm.

[00:13:25] Speaker 00:
We have to look at the claims of harm individually for each applicant.

[00:13:31] Speaker 04:
Or do you have to look at them cumulatively?

[00:13:33] Speaker 04:
That's one of the big issues.

[00:13:35] Speaker 00:
You look at the cumulative harm as to each applicant.

[00:13:38] Speaker 00:
But these applicants have not established a pattern of persecution that links them together.

[00:13:44] Speaker 03:
Even when the threat is made to that person or your family, as my colleague had just pointed out, the threat was to them or the family.

[00:13:53] Speaker 00:
And I don't think that one instance of a death threat that says I'll kill you and your family creates a pattern of persecution that links the three isolated instances.

[00:14:04] Speaker 03:
This is almost like 1984.

[00:14:05] Speaker 03:
We're talking Nicaragua here.

[00:14:08] Speaker 03:
I think it's pretty self-evident that the government of the United States, I don't think that's changed its policy, views the Ortega regime and what it's been doing for years as being pretty sinister.

[00:14:20] Speaker 03:
Don't we have to take that into account when we consider whether or not these threats are just idle?

[00:14:26] Speaker 03:
Those are political claims that are being made.

[00:14:29] Speaker 03:
It's a protected category.

[00:14:30] Speaker 03:
I find it kind of unusual that the government's saying, this Ortega's a great guy.

[00:14:34] Speaker 03:
He wouldn't do anything wrong.

[00:14:36] Speaker 03:
Isn't that what you're basically asking us to do?

[00:14:39] Speaker 00:
Well, no, I'm certainly not saying that.

[00:14:41] Speaker 00:
But what I'm saying is that we need to look at the harm each applicant claimed.

[00:14:47] Speaker 00:
I agree.

[00:14:47] Speaker 00:
And Alba's father is not an applicant.

[00:14:50] Speaker 03:
But again, as my colleague has pointed out, the threat was to the applicant and family.

[00:14:56] Speaker 03:
There's evidence of something done to the family.

[00:15:00] Speaker 03:
That's part of the same threat.

[00:15:01] Speaker 03:
I mean, we've got lots of cases that say that, right?

[00:15:04] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:15:05] Speaker 00:
But here, when Lester was attacked, Alba had nothing to do with it.

[00:15:09] Speaker 00:
She wasn't with him.

[00:15:10] Speaker 00:
They didn't say anything about her.

[00:15:11] Speaker 00:
It was two years after her incident with the text messages and the phones.

[00:15:17] Speaker 00:
And we don't even know that Lester actually attended the April March, the April 2018 March.

[00:15:23] Speaker 00:
We know that Alba did.

[00:15:24] Speaker 00:
And then she received threatening text messages.

[00:15:27] Speaker 00:
And they were threatening her with imprisonment and torture, not death threats.

[00:15:31] Speaker 03:
But it's a consistent pattern.

[00:15:32] Speaker 03:
Anybody that sticks their head up, there's a threat.

[00:15:35] Speaker 03:
Maybe not at the same time, but part of the same family, right?

[00:15:39] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry, could you?

[00:15:40] Speaker 03:
In other words, you've got different threats to different people, but they're still part of the same family.

[00:15:44] Speaker 03:
They're consistent with it.

[00:15:46] Speaker 03:
If you get involved politically, you're going to have a problem.

[00:15:50] Speaker 03:
Maybe you get killed.

[00:15:53] Speaker 03:
It's the same thing, is it not?

[00:15:54] Speaker 00:
I don't think so, because again, what happened with Alba was she attended a march.

[00:16:00] Speaker 00:
She was no longer a member of a political party, and then she received some threatening text messages.

[00:16:04] Speaker 03:
Because the party was dissolved.

[00:16:06] Speaker 00:
Correct.

[00:16:06] Speaker 00:
Right.

[00:16:07] Speaker 00:
And she doesn't know who the text messages came from.

[00:16:09] Speaker 00:
And then she was stopped by a police officer.

[00:16:12] Speaker 00:
Her phone was confiscated.

[00:16:14] Speaker 00:
But during that time, there's no evidence that they were also after Lester, or they didn't say anything about him.

[00:16:21] Speaker 00:
And again, that was one incident and it was two years later that Lester had the incident on the street.

[00:16:28] Speaker 04:
That tends to show they're still after them because of their participation or support for the opposition party.

[00:16:34] Speaker 04:
What about the fact then they fled Nicaragua and there's evidence that the police were inquiring where they were after they fled, right?

[00:16:45] Speaker 00:
There's evidence, it was kind of vague testimony about police officers going to, I think, a sibling's home in Nicaragua.

[00:16:54] Speaker 00:
I think they were searching for them, but there were no details of a search to what extent.

[00:17:00] Speaker 04:
The very fact that they were looking to, I guess I'm particularly thinking about future harm.

[00:17:05] Speaker 04:
I guess the petitioners are saying, look, if we're sent back the

[00:17:10] Speaker 04:
Country conditions report says that many deportees from the US back to Nicaragua get arrested upon return and disappear.

[00:17:20] Speaker 04:
Is that an unreasonable fear of this couple?

[00:17:24] Speaker 00:
It may be subjectively reasonable.

[00:17:27] Speaker 00:
However, they don't have an objectively reasonable fear of future harm.

[00:17:32] Speaker 04:
Why not?

[00:17:32] Speaker 04:
The country report says that the people in their group, meaning people who fled and now are repatriated forcibly,

[00:17:40] Speaker 00:
Well, they're part of that group, are they not?

[00:17:43] Speaker 00:
There's no evidence that anyone is continuing to look for them.

[00:17:48] Speaker 00:
They have family members.

[00:17:50] Speaker 00:
I think Alba has about nine siblings.

[00:17:53] Speaker 00:
Maybe not all are in Nicaragua, but many of them are in Nicaragua, and they have not experienced any harm.

[00:17:59] Speaker 04:
Well, maybe that's because they weren't politically active like Alba, or they didn't participate in this anti-government march.

[00:18:06] Speaker 00:
Well, that could be.

[00:18:08] Speaker 00:
That would be speculation.

[00:18:09] Speaker 00:
But I think it's important to remember that this case is a lot like this court's decisions in Sharma, Prasad, and Duran Rodriguez, where there was really just three isolated incidents.

[00:18:27] Speaker 00:
And they did not rise to the level of serious harm that this court found in Flores Medina.

[00:18:33] Speaker 00:
In Flores Medina, the petitioner was a very active, publicly active, protester in Nicaragua.

[00:18:41] Speaker 00:
And he witnessed his friend die.

[00:18:43] Speaker 00:
He was shot in front of him.

[00:18:44] Speaker 00:
He had death threats spray painted on his house.

[00:18:47] Speaker 00:
He fled twice.

[00:18:48] Speaker 00:
He was tracked down.

[00:18:50] Speaker 00:
And I believe he was beaten at the second encounter.

[00:18:56] Speaker 00:
And here, we just don't have that.

[00:19:00] Speaker 00:
one instance of detention to someone who is, at best, a little linked to Alba and Lester.

[00:19:10] Speaker 00:
Like the father?

[00:19:10] Speaker 00:
The father, yeah.

[00:19:13] Speaker 00:
Well, his harm is somewhat linked.

[00:19:17] Speaker 00:
And we have, again, the harm to Alba

[00:19:22] Speaker 00:
in 2018 and then the harm to Lester in 2020.

[00:19:25] Speaker 00:
So two years went by and nothing was happening.

[00:19:31] Speaker 04:
Nothing was happening.

[00:19:33] Speaker 04:
There's sort of a pattern of something happening post-MARC participation in the march.

[00:19:39] Speaker 00:
Well, they didn't testify about any continued threats throughout 2018 or 2019.

[00:19:46] Speaker 00:
There's just no testimony about continued abuses other than these isolated sporadic incidents.

[00:19:58] Speaker 00:
And so in Prasad, that's a case where this court

[00:20:03] Speaker 00:
found that the harm did not rise to the level of past persecution.

[00:20:10] Speaker 00:
Where the petitioner was detained for four to six hours, he was beaten.

[00:20:13] Speaker 00:
And that is certainly much more menacing than what Lester experienced.

[00:20:21] Speaker 03:
Can we shift just for a second?

[00:20:23] Speaker 03:
What's your response to the petitioner's argument that when the BIA cites Burbano that all issues not explicitly raised before the BIA but asserted before the IJ are considered exhausted?

[00:20:37] Speaker 00:
So I believe that's correct.

[00:20:41] Speaker 00:
We are looking at the IJ's decision here.

[00:20:43] Speaker 00:
So issues brought before the IJ.

[00:20:46] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:20:46] Speaker 03:
Other questions of the government by my colleagues?

[00:20:48] Speaker 03:
Thank you very much, counsel.

[00:20:49] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:20:50] Speaker 03:
I appreciate it.

[00:20:52] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:20:54] Speaker 03:
Mr. Libideck.

[00:20:58] Speaker 01:
Great.

[00:20:58] Speaker 01:
Thanks.

[00:20:59] Speaker 01:
So I just want to quickly respond to a couple of the arguments the government made.

[00:21:04] Speaker 01:
So the government said a few things that I think are made very difficult to argue based on the Sharma case and the seven factors that guide this court's past persecution analysis.

[00:21:16] Speaker 01:
Harm to a family member is explicitly

[00:21:20] Speaker 01:
goes into the analysis.

[00:21:21] Speaker 01:
This is not something that, you know, you take every family, only the things that happen to the petitioners you need to look at broadly what happened to the family.

[00:21:30] Speaker 01:
And here we have six of the seven Sharma factors that are met here.

[00:21:35] Speaker 01:
We have a continued, you know, pattern of isolated, sorry, pattern of

[00:21:42] Speaker 01:
escalating mistreatment, we have physical injury, we have harm to the family members, we have country in turmoil where the country condition reports make very clear that the things that are happening in Nicaragua to this exact group of people are recurring and very troubling.

[00:22:02] Speaker 01:
The government also mentioned the Duran and Prasad cases.

[00:22:08] Speaker 01:
Those cases are very different than the ones we have here.

[00:22:09] Speaker 01:
In Duran, there was no physical violence.

[00:22:11] Speaker 01:
I know Judge Smith wrote a concurrence in that case.

[00:22:13] Speaker 01:
It had to do with two threats.

[00:22:15] Speaker 01:
And Prasad was, this was an isolated incident case.

[00:22:19] Speaker 01:
There was one detention, as the government mentioned.

[00:22:22] Speaker 01:
There were some very tough things that happened during that.

[00:22:24] Speaker 01:
But the petitioner was not able to bring up anything else that happened to him outside of that one incident.

[00:22:32] Speaker 01:
Here we have a pattern.

[00:22:33] Speaker 01:
And I think the government a couple of times

[00:22:35] Speaker 01:
reference the fact that there were gaps in between what happened to this family.

[00:22:41] Speaker 01:
But I think that the gaps actually very much strengthen the petitioner's case because they show that there's a continued interest in them.

[00:22:49] Speaker 01:
After three years, they participated in one march and in between the instances of mistreatment, they were essentially in hiding.

[00:22:57] Speaker 01:
They would only go grocery shopping once a month.

[00:23:00] Speaker 01:
So I think that, you know, the fact that there's a bit of a time gap here is not at all, you know, should not weigh against them.

[00:23:09] Speaker 01:
And if anything, it should support their claim.

[00:23:12] Speaker 03:
Other questions by my colleague?

[00:23:14] Speaker 03:
Thanks to both counsel for your argument.

[00:23:16] Speaker 03:
We appreciate it.

[00:23:17] Speaker 03:
The case just argued is submitted.