[00:00:10] Speaker 03:
Good morning, counsel.

[00:00:10] Speaker 03:
I don't see, is the government attorney here?

[00:00:17] Speaker 03:
Mr. Honor, I'm here.

[00:00:22] Speaker 02:
I'm appearing by video.

[00:00:24] Speaker 03:
Okay, thank you.

[00:00:27] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:00:28] Speaker 03:
You may proceed, Mr. Phillips.

[00:00:31] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors, and may it please the Court, David Phillips on behalf of Petitioner Segundo Rodriguez-Lara.

[00:00:37] Speaker 00:
I'll aim to reserve three minutes for rebuttal and I'll keep an eye on my time.

[00:00:42] Speaker 00:
In December 2023, Mr. Rodriguez-Lara underwent brutal sexual torture at the hands of the Nicaraguan police.

[00:00:49] Speaker 00:
He was taken to a dark room, stripped naked, and sexually and physically assaulted for eight hours by five police officers.

[00:00:57] Speaker 00:
During his expedited removal proceedings, embarrassment and an understandable fear of law enforcement officers led Mr. Rodriguez's lawyer to clam up.

[00:01:07] Speaker 00:
He told the asylum officer and the immigration judge about his improper arrest, but he did not disclose the details about his prolonged sexual and physical assault.

[00:01:16] Speaker 00:
This court now has those details, and the immigration judge should hear them too.

[00:01:21] Speaker 00:
The court should therefore remand for the immigration judge to decide whether to receive Mr. Rodriguez-Lara's full account of his arrest in December 2023.

[00:01:29] Speaker 00:
This court has the inherent authority to remand, even in immigration cases.

[00:01:35] Speaker 00:
And remand is especially appropriate here, both because the full account of Mr. Rodriguez-Lara's assault is so plainly material to his claims for relief, and also because his delay in providing that account is excusable due to his trauma.

[00:01:51] Speaker 00:
If the court remands, it should also correct two errors in the immigration judge's analysis.

[00:01:56] Speaker 00:
First, the immigration judge improperly disregarded the fact that Mr. Rodriguez Lara was targeted based on his political neutrality, which is a protected ground.

[00:02:06] Speaker 00:
Second, the immigration judge erred in finding, quote, no evidence that the individuals following Mr. Rodriguez-Laura actually work for the government.

[00:02:15] Speaker 00:
And finally, if the court does not remand, it should at least stay issuance of the mandate to allow Mr. Rodriguez-Laura to seek reopening himself before the immigration judge.

[00:02:24] Speaker 01:
Just on that last point, he is no longer in the United States, right?

[00:02:29] Speaker 01:
That's right, Judge.

[00:02:30] Speaker 01:
So what does staying the mandate do?

[00:02:34] Speaker 00:
So staying the mandate preserves this court's stay of removal.

[00:02:38] Speaker 00:
And even though Mr. Rodriguez-Lara has departed for Nicaragua under the ICE directive, ICE policy directive 11-06-1, the government has a policy of facilitating the return of non-citizens who have departed from the United States if their presence is necessary to continue with their request for relief in the proceedings before an immigration judge.

[00:03:00] Speaker 00:
And so if Mr. Rodriguez-Lara is able to successfully receive reopening, either through a remand from this court or by moving for reopening himself under that ICE directive, under that ICE policy, there's a chance that he may be able to return to litigate his request for relief and the state of removal will be in effect at that point.

[00:03:17] Speaker 01:
But I guess if he, suppose he files a motion to reopen and suppose it's granted and he, the proceedings are reopened or I suppose if we were to remand,

[00:03:29] Speaker 01:
As I understood the directive, once the proceedings are reopened, if his presence is necessary, he would then be returned.

[00:03:35] Speaker 01:
But that doesn't have anything to do with whether we've issued the mandate or not, does it?

[00:03:39] Speaker 00:
My point is that if he does return under the ICE policy directive at that point and he's participating in those proceedings, there's nothing preventing the government from then removing him because there will be no stay of removal in place.

[00:03:51] Speaker 00:
But if this court stays the mandate such that the stay of removal that is currently in place continues in place, my client will have the protection of that order while he returns and once he's returned and he is litigating those removal proceedings.

[00:04:03] Speaker 00:
Moving forward.

[00:04:04] Speaker 00:
I'd like to begin first with remand.

[00:04:06] Speaker 00:
As the Second Circuit explained in Lin v. Department of Justice, Congress has placed review of immigration petitions in the hands of courts with equity powers, and those powers do include the ability to remand cases for further proceedings without deciding the merits.

[00:04:19] Speaker 01:
The new evidence there was evidence of an official Chinese policy.

[00:04:28] Speaker 01:
We have a case subsequent to that, Shen, that treated a similar policy as a judicially noticeable change in foreign law.

[00:04:42] Speaker 01:
I mean, I dissented in Shen, but that's our treatment of that issue.

[00:04:51] Speaker 01:
I guess I don't see how either of those, though, gets you a remand for the consideration of new facts that are clearly facts specific to this petitioner that are not part of the administrative record.

[00:05:07] Speaker 01:
So what's the authority supporting the proposition that that sort of course is appropriate?

[00:05:12] Speaker 00:
Well, I think the foundation of the court's inherent authority that the Second Circuit described in Lin is broader than just for new documentary evidence of that nature about country conditions.

[00:05:25] Speaker 00:
So as the Supreme Court put it in the Ford case, which is the case that the Second Circuit relied on in Lin for laying out where this inherent authority comes from,

[00:05:34] Speaker 00:
Courts have inherent authority to remand for further proceedings where justice demands that course in order that some defect in the record may be supplied.

[00:05:42] Speaker 00:
So I think the authority is equitable and this court can remand for consideration of new facts.

[00:05:47] Speaker 00:
I would also point the court to this court's decision in Melgar Alas versus Garland which we lay out on page 14.

[00:05:54] Speaker 00:
of our supplemental opening brief.

[00:05:55] Speaker 00:
So in Melgar, Alaska, the court remanded a petition for review to the BIA so that the BIA could consider a recent en banc decision from this court, but the panel also ordered that the BIA could determine whether to return the matter to the immigration judge to further consider the petitioner's cat claim and new evidence.

[00:06:12] Speaker 00:
I don't think that new evidence was of the type considered in

[00:06:15] Speaker 00:
So I do think that the ability to remand for remedy defects on the record does apply to new facts.

[00:06:22] Speaker 00:
It's a question for the immigration judge in the first instance whether to accept those new facts.

[00:06:26] Speaker 03:
Is this a strategic decision to pursue the petition for review instead of making a motion to reopen?

[00:06:33] Speaker 03:
I mean, your client has not made a motion to reopen based on these facts, right?

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
That's correct.

[00:06:40] Speaker 00:
And the answer is it was not a strategic decision for my client because my client was not aware that a motion to reopen was available to him.

[00:06:48] Speaker 03:
The record shows that... Pro bono then, right?

[00:06:50] Speaker 00:
I'm sorry?

[00:06:50] Speaker 03:
Was he pro bono with his first... He was proceeding pro se in his expedited... Right, pro se.

[00:06:55] Speaker 03:
You're pro bono.

[00:06:56] Speaker 03:
That's right.

[00:06:56] Speaker 00:
That's right.

[00:06:57] Speaker 00:
He was proceeding pro se in his expedited removal proceedings.

[00:07:00] Speaker 00:
And what he was told was that there was no administrative review available of the immigration judge's decision and that his next recourse was to come to this court.

[00:07:09] Speaker 00:
So he took those instructions at face value.

[00:07:11] Speaker 00:
He came to this court.

[00:07:12] Speaker 00:
He filed a timely petition for review.

[00:07:15] Speaker 00:
And in his pro se opening brief, he then disclosed the full account of his torture in December of 2023.

[00:07:21] Speaker 00:
And so it's not gamesmanship on my client's part.

[00:07:25] Speaker 00:
He came to the tribunal that was the next stop for him, as he'd been told.

[00:07:30] Speaker 00:
And his reticence to disclose that to law enforcement officers is understandable.

[00:07:35] Speaker 00:
And I want to hit that point.

[00:07:38] Speaker 00:
So the court can grant this relief to Mr. Rodriguez-Laura in light of its inherent authority.

[00:07:43] Speaker 00:
It should grant this relief to Mr. Rodriguez-Laura first because the full account of his torture at the hands of the police is so clearly material to his claim on the merits.

[00:07:53] Speaker 03:
And then... I'm wondering if we could do a limited remand to allow him to file a motion to reopen before the immigration court.

[00:08:04] Speaker 03:
Because we have now this account, it hasn't been tested, you know, and so, and we can't take new evidence.

[00:08:16] Speaker 03:
And on the record that's actually before us, I don't think we would be able to grant the petition based on this record.

[00:08:31] Speaker 03:
So if we were to do a limited remand to have the evidence taken and tested and then have the case come back to us.

[00:08:40] Speaker 03:
I'm just throwing that out there.

[00:08:42] Speaker 00:
That is essentially what my client is asking for, Judge Wardlaw, is my client is not, and I don't want to be clear, my client is not asking for this court to go ahead and receive the new evidence that he inserted in his pro se opening brief and then decide the petition for review on that basis.

[00:08:57] Speaker 00:
He wants to present that evidence to the proper decision maker in the first instance, which is the immigration judge.

[00:09:02] Speaker 00:
So that is essentially what my client is asking for, is a limited remit.

[00:09:05] Speaker 01:
And if you don't get a remand and he goes and files a motion to reopen, would that be time barred at this point, or what would happen if he filed a motion to reopen?

[00:09:16] Speaker 00:
So under this Court's precedence,

[00:09:20] Speaker 00:
Non-citizens who are in expedited removal proceedings, like my client, are able to request both normal reopening under the regulations and also suesponte reopening.

[00:09:29] Speaker 00:
Under normal reopening, the time has elapsed, but there are equitable tolling arguments available to him, and he can press those.

[00:09:35] Speaker 00:
And the same applies for suesponte reopening.

[00:09:37] Speaker 00:
There is no time limit for suesponte reopening.

[00:09:39] Speaker 00:
That's part of the reason why suesponte reopening exists.

[00:09:42] Speaker 00:
But he would make similar arguments about why the delay in disclosing these details is excusable.

[00:09:46] Speaker 01:
And the tolling on the regular reopening would be the time is told during the pendency of the petition for review in this court?

[00:09:56] Speaker 00:
That would be the argument.

[00:09:57] Speaker 00:
The argument would be that he, you know, he presented these facts once he was able, you know, despite his trauma, able to disclose them to the next tribunal to which he was directed in the administrative proceedings, which was in this court.

[00:10:08] Speaker 00:
He then pressed, you know, pressed his request to get this in front of the proper decision maker during the pendency in this court.

[00:10:13] Speaker 00:
And then if this court remands, it will then go back to that proposition.

[00:10:16] Speaker 01:
So why isn't a motion to reopen an adequate vehicle for getting this in front of the agency?

[00:10:25] Speaker 01:
And you don't need to remand?

[00:10:27] Speaker 00:
Yes, for two reasons.

[00:10:29] Speaker 00:
One is that in Melgar, Alas, the court didn't just remand with instructions for the BIA to consider whether it should take new evidence.

[00:10:37] Speaker 00:
It also stayed the petitioner's removal pending that decision.

[00:10:40] Speaker 00:
by the BIA.

[00:10:41] Speaker 00:
And so in this case, this court could follow that example in Melgar Alas and stay and continue the stay of removal during the pendency of that limit.

[00:10:49] Speaker 01:
But there's nothing to stay because, I mean, the stay is just preventing his hypothetical future removal after his hypothetical future return, right?

[00:10:59] Speaker 01:
So that's sort of an odd thing to be asking us for at this point.

[00:11:03] Speaker 00:
It's true, but I took your honor's question to be what's the difference between, you know, remanding and him going in.

[00:11:07] Speaker 00:
And the difference is if he's able to avail himself – excuse me – of the ICE policy directive and return to the United States to litigate his claim for relief, he will have the protection of the stay if this court remands and maintains the stay, just like it did in Melgar, Alaska.

[00:11:20] Speaker 00:
If the court simply denies a petition for review and my client has to go in for reopening and then follows that process, there's nothing to say that he can't be deported and removed again in the middle of that proceeding.

[00:11:29] Speaker 00:
So that's one reason.

[00:11:31] Speaker 00:
Second, the other reason why we think that remand is more appropriate and frankly more beneficial for the client is that we think he'll stand on stronger footing if this case is part of the same proceeding that it has always been.

[00:11:43] Speaker 00:
Again, he pressed the full account of his torture in the next tribunal to which he was directed, which is this court.

[00:11:52] Speaker 00:
If this court sends it back, it's all part of the same proceeding and the IJ will be considering it on that basis.

[00:11:56] Speaker 00:
as opposed to if my client walks in now on his own independently.

[00:11:59] Speaker 00:
Now it's 19 months after the IJ issued his initial decision.

[00:12:04] Speaker 00:
We think that's a fundamentally different posture for the IJ to consider the question.

[00:12:08] Speaker 00:
I do want to say also, if this court remands, this court should also correct two legal errors in the immigration judge's reasoning, because those legal errors are going to come right back up in the event that the immigration judge does receive the full account of Mr. Rodriguez-Lara's torture.

[00:12:25] Speaker 00:
That first error, again, was the immigration judge acknowledging that there were two reasons why Mr. Rodriguez-Lara was fearing future harm, because he had not applied for a military ID, was one.

[00:12:36] Speaker 00:
And the second was because he was involved in an investigation in 2020 where he gave information to a patient at the hospital.

[00:12:42] Speaker 00:
But the immigration judge then immediately disregarded the refusal to get a military ID as protected ground.

[00:12:48] Speaker 01:
I think now twice said that if we remand, we should correct those errors.

[00:12:52] Speaker 01:
Are you not advancing those as independent grounds for granting the petition?

[00:13:00] Speaker 00:
Not absent a remand simply because we understand that my client faces an uphill battle on the question of whether his harm that he did suffer that's currently in the administrative record would rise to the level of persecution and torture.

[00:13:13] Speaker 00:
He needs the new evidence to be able to make a full case to be able to carry his burden across all of the requirements for withholding of removal and cat relief.

[00:13:23] Speaker 00:
And so simply correcting those errors is probably not going to get him very far.

[00:13:27] Speaker 00:
But if the court remands and gets the new evidence in, the new evidence itself also will not go very far without correcting these errors.

[00:13:33] Speaker 00:
Because even if my client can present his full account of the torture, if the immigration judge concludes that the torture was not inflicted upon a protected ground, then the quantum of the harm is not going to matter.

[00:13:45] Speaker 00:
So that's why we say what we really want is a remand here.

[00:13:48] Speaker 00:
He needs the new evidence to get in, but this court should also correct those errors.

[00:13:51] Speaker 03:
You want to save the rest of your time for rebuttal?

[00:13:54] Speaker 03:
Okay.

[00:13:54] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:14:13] Speaker 02:
Please the court.

[00:14:15] Speaker 02:
Jenny Lee on behalf of the respondent, the attorney general of the United States.

[00:14:19] Speaker 02:
The court should deny petitioners request for remand because there's no inherent authority for the court to grant remand simply because a petitioner would like a do-over.

[00:14:32] Speaker 02:
In this case, nothing inequitable happened during the asylum hearing.

[00:14:37] Speaker 02:
I'm sorry, during the interview with the asylum officer.

[00:14:40] Speaker 02:
During that interview, it was just petitioner.

[00:14:44] Speaker 02:
the asylum officer and an interpreter by phone.

[00:14:47] Speaker 02:
That was his first and best opportunity to present his claim.

[00:14:52] Speaker 02:
Second, when he went before an immigration judge, he was sworn to tell his full story.

[00:14:59] Speaker 02:
He was given an opportunity to say if he had any opposition to what he told the asylum officer.

[00:15:06] Speaker 02:
And he again, affirmed his story.

[00:15:09] Speaker 02:
And now,

[00:15:12] Speaker 02:
he would like the court to give him a relief of going back to the agency to say that he had a different claim based on his unsworn statement in his informal brief.

[00:15:27] Speaker 02:
I have never seen this happen before in any case.

[00:15:31] Speaker 02:
Although petitioners counsel cites to Milgar Alas, that was probably a case.

[00:15:39] Speaker 02:
Sorry.

[00:15:41] Speaker 02:
where there was an unopposed motion by the government to remand.

[00:15:46] Speaker 02:
In such cases, yes, the court grants the remand motion.

[00:15:50] Speaker 02:
And here, again, I think it would be quite incredible to allow a petitioner to come to an appellate court and say, I would like another opportunity.

[00:16:10] Speaker 02:
With regard to the Second Circuit case petitioners council sites, when, as Judge Miller noted, it was judicially noticeable facts or information that the court accepted.

[00:16:30] Speaker 02:
And in that case, again, it was an unopposed remand motion.

[00:16:34] Speaker 02:
The government did not oppose remand in those cases.

[00:16:40] Speaker 03:
And you oppose Riemann here, why?

[00:16:46] Speaker 02:
Because Petitioner had an opportunity before an asylum officer and an immigration judge to tell his full story.

[00:16:53] Speaker 02:
He swore that he was telling the full story.

[00:16:55] Speaker 02:
He was asked if he was comfortable, if he understood the interpreter.

[00:16:58] Speaker 02:
Both times he said he was telling his full story.

[00:17:04] Speaker 02:
The fact that he can file a motion to reopen

[00:17:09] Speaker 02:
which would be the best vehicle for him to get this forward before the immigration judge, petitioner has not done so.

[00:17:16] Speaker 02:
And the problem with not telling your full truth as soon as you come to the country, fleeing from your home country is if you don't tell the asylum officer what happened to you and you say a different story before the immigration judge, well, that is the basis of an adverse credibility determination.

[00:17:34] Speaker 02:
And so that is a huge hurdle for a petitioner that he has to overcome.

[00:17:38] Speaker 02:
With regard to the motion to reopen, it is untimely.

[00:17:42] Speaker 02:
He was supposed to file it within 90 days of the immigration judge's decision.

[00:17:46] Speaker 02:
Obviously, that passed over a year ago.

[00:17:50] Speaker 02:
And he does have an avenue of a suesponte, a motion to reopen suesponte.

[00:17:55] Speaker 02:
But again, that is a huge hurdle because he has to not only overcome

[00:18:02] Speaker 02:
the average credibility determination, I'm sorry, the factors that can go into an average credibility determination, but he has to show why his prior hearings, why he could not tell his full truth.

[00:18:16] Speaker 01:
And your friend on the other side said that the time would be told while the petition for review was pending in this court.

[00:18:23] Speaker 01:
Do you agree with that?

[00:18:25] Speaker 02:
I do not agree with that.

[00:18:27] Speaker 02:
The time for the motion to reopen, which

[00:18:31] Speaker 02:
is in HUSC 1229 AC7 and C little i that deals with the timing and it must be done 90 days after the immigration judge's decision.

[00:18:42] Speaker 02:
The immigration judge's decision was on April 9th of 2024 so 90 days after would be July 8th.

[00:18:49] Speaker 02:
So obviously that's passed and he did not file and there is nothing that would prevent a petitioner from filing a motion to reopen at the same time a petition

[00:19:00] Speaker 02:
Um, for review is pending.

[00:19:02] Speaker 02:
And, um, another hurdle that he would have if he filed a motion to reopen was he would have to show, um, that he had exercised due diligence during this whole time.

[00:19:10] Speaker 02:
Obviously, when he filed his pro se motion, sorry, his pro se brief, he knew he, he did not make his full claims.

[00:19:24] Speaker 01:
I asked you a question about the the IJ's decision so and this goes to the question of Nexus so the the IJ said the his fears are not based on any protected ground but on his belief that the government seeks to harm him because of the information he previously provided

[00:19:46] Speaker 01:
And in the preceding sentence it says he was involved in this investigation at a hospital where he gave information to a patient.

[00:19:52] Speaker 01:
And so the impression you get from the IJ's view of it is that this was like a violation of Nicaraguan HIPAA or something.

[00:20:01] Speaker 01:
But when you read the full context of his account,

[00:20:05] Speaker 01:
It seems fairly clear that the giving of information was a form of political opposition to the regime, because the information was about the violent suppression of this protest.

[00:20:18] Speaker 01:
And the not getting a military ID, which prompted an official to call him a traitor seems to have been of a piece with that as a form of political opposition.

[00:20:34] Speaker 01:
political opinion or imputed political opinion are obviously protected grounds and the IJ just seems not to have appreciated that.

[00:20:41] Speaker 01:
So what's your response?

[00:20:45] Speaker 02:
Even if the immigration judge did not appreciate the full, his full claim about political opinion, Mr. Rodriguez-Laura still must establish a reasonable possibility of persecution.

[00:20:59] Speaker 02:
And the immigration judge made a clear finding on that, that Mr. Rodriguez-Laura did not.

[00:21:05] Speaker 01:
And even if we do have the- Sorry to interrupt you there, but it wasn't clear to me that there was a finding of lack of possibility of future harm independent from the no nexus finding.

[00:21:21] Speaker 01:
So what would you point me to to show that?

[00:21:24] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:21:25] Speaker 02:
First, I would point the court to the administrative record at two.

[00:21:30] Speaker 02:
The second line, the non-citizen has failed to establish a reasonable possibility.

[00:21:34] Speaker 02:
of persecution if returned to Nicaragua.

[00:21:37] Speaker 02:
And also, as we know, according to this court's precedent and lots of other court decisions, Bartolome and so forth,

[00:21:47] Speaker 02:
Reasonable fear proceedings are very brief.

[00:21:52] Speaker 02:
The immigration judge does not go into a full explanation or a full hearing that we would for a normal removal hearing as to the claim and the decisions in the past.

[00:22:03] Speaker 02:
I don't know if you remember the Seaners, but it used to be the judge would have like three little lines to write something really short.

[00:22:10] Speaker 02:
And so that was sufficient process

[00:22:14] Speaker 02:
for reasonable fair hearings.

[00:22:15] Speaker 02:
And so here, that's what the immigration judge did.

[00:22:18] Speaker 02:
And that is independently dispositive of the reasonable possibility of persecution claim for the wealth for withholding of removal.

[00:22:29] Speaker 02:
So the fact that Petitioner testified that he was never harmed

[00:22:34] Speaker 02:
And he provided insufficient evidence that there was a good reason for him to fear future harm, where he testified he was never harmed.

[00:22:41] Speaker 02:
And the only fear that he had was some people verbally

[00:22:46] Speaker 02:
insulted him and he saw some people surveilling him.

[00:22:50] Speaker 02:
That is not sufficient under this court's definition of what persecution is.

[00:22:54] Speaker 02:
So that by itself is sufficient.

[00:22:59] Speaker 02:
That's sufficient to show that substantial evidence supports the immigration judge's reasonable fear finding with regard to persecution and

[00:23:12] Speaker 02:
The PFR should also be denied with regard to Kat because the immigration judge, substantial evidence supports the immigration judge's finding that Mr. Rodriguez-Laura did not establish a reasonable possibility of torture where there was no evidence of past torture and there was no evidence that there was a good reason for him to fear the possibility of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

[00:23:40] Speaker 02:
For those reasons, respondent asks that the petition for review be denied.

[00:23:45] Speaker 02:
And I thank the court for its time.

[00:23:47] Speaker 02:
If there are no more questions, the respondent rests on the brief submitted.

[00:23:52] Speaker 02:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:23:53] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:24:03] Speaker 00:
Just a few points in rebuttal, Your Honors.

[00:24:06] Speaker 00:
The government's arguments against this court's inherent authority to remand are new.

[00:24:11] Speaker 00:
The government's arguments in its brief were simply the argument that the court couldn't consider extra record evidence.

[00:24:16] Speaker 00:
As we explained in our reply brief, those cases and those principles don't apply in this context where we are asking the court to remand without disturbing the merits.

[00:24:23] Speaker 00:
and of course mister rodriguez lara should have presented his fax the full count of his fax known as this because is disputing that and we aren't uh... but to respond to reopening and equitable tolling both exist for that reason and so does this court's inherent authority and it's a question for the immigration judge in the first instance whether to believe

[00:24:40] Speaker 00:
my client's account, and whether to excuse his late, his lateness in disclosing those facts.

[00:24:46] Speaker 00:
Those are questions for the IJ in the first instance.

[00:24:49] Speaker 00:
And as the government admits, suesponte reopening is available, and we would also press that equitable tolling is available, or at least he can make those arguments before the IJ.

[00:24:57] Speaker 00:
In Malgar Alas, it's true that the government was the one who moved to remand, but the government doesn't, the government here doesn't explain where the source of authority is for that remand authority.

[00:25:05] Speaker 00:
We submit that it's the same inherent authority to remand that applies in every agency case.

[00:25:09] Speaker 00:
and also applies in the immigration context.

[00:25:11] Speaker 00:
My client, again, repressed the full account of his torture to the first tribunal to which he was directed after his administrative proceedings, which was this court.

[00:25:21] Speaker 00:
The government repeats the argument that there was an independent legal basis in the immigration judge's withholding of removal analysis.

[00:25:28] Speaker 00:
That's wrong for the reasons that we explain in our reply brief.

[00:25:30] Speaker 00:
The language that my friend quotes that Mr. Rodriguez-Lara, quote, failed to establish reasonable possibility of persecution is the overarching standard for the overall requirement for withholding of removal.

[00:25:41] Speaker 00:
It does not make clear that there was a finding about the level of harm.

[00:25:43] Speaker 00:
We ask that the court remand.

[00:25:45] Speaker 03:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:25:47] Speaker 03:
I also want to thank Mr. Phillips and Joan State for doing this case pro bono.

[00:25:53] Speaker 03:
And thank you very much.

[00:25:55] Speaker 03:
And Rodriguez, Laura versus Bondi will be submitted.