## Facts

- R-A-, a Guatemalan woman, suffered severe physical, sexual, and psychological abuse by her husband beginning shortly after marriage.
- The husband asserted entitlement to control and harm her and maintained a pattern of domination and violence.
- She repeatedly sought protection from Guatemalan authorities; police did not provide meaningful protection and treated the abuse as a private matter.
- She fled to the United States and applied for asylum and withholding of deportation, asserting persecution based on membership in a particular social group and political opinion.

## Issues

1. Whether the harm constituted persecution “on account of” membership in a particular social group within the meaning of the refugee definition.
2. Whether the proposed group—Guatemalan women in intimate relationships with men who believe women must live under male domination—qualified as a cognizable particular social group and, if so, whether the abuse was motivated at least in part by that membership.
3. Whether the abuse was inflicted “on account of” the respondent’s actual or imputed political opinion rather than personal or domestic motives.
4. What effect the Attorney General’s referral, vacatur, and remand had on the precedential and merits status of the BIA’s 1999 decision.

## Decision

- The Immigration Judge granted asylum, finding persecution and a nexus to both a particular social group and political opinion.
- The BIA reversed and denied asylum, concluding the respondent failed to show the required nexus to a protected ground (particular social group or political opinion).
- The Attorney General vacated the BIA’s 1999 decision in full and remanded to the BIA, directing it to hold reconsideration in abeyance pending final regulations addressing “particular social group,” persecution, and gender-related claims.
- After vacatur, there was no operative final merits ruling by the Attorney General on asylum eligibility at that time.

## Legal Principles

- Asylum requires proof that persecution was inflicted “on account of” a protected ground; severe harm alone does not satisfy the statutory nexus requirement.
- Political-opinion claims require meaningful evidence that the persecutor was motivated by the applicant’s actual political opinion or an opinion imputed to the applicant; personal or domestic motives, without evidence of political attribution, are insufficient.
- A particular social group requires more than shared descriptive traits; relevant considerations include societal perception of the group and whether the persecutor was motivated, at least in part, by the applicant’s group membership.
- When the Attorney General vacates a BIA decision and remands for reconsideration, the vacated decision lacks binding precedential effect while the matter is pending further agency action.

## Conclusion

The BIA denied asylum because the record did not establish that the respondent’s domestic abuse was motivated by her political opinion or by membership in a legally cognizable particular social group, and the Attorney General later vacated that denial and remanded to await regulatory guidance on evaluating gender-related and particular-social-group asylum claims.


In re R-A-, 22 I. & N. Dec. 906 (B.I.A. 1999), vacated, (A.G. 2001)