## Facts

- A Mexican citizen in removal proceedings sought asylum and withholding of removal, claiming harm by the cartel La Familia Michoacana.
- The respondent’s father owned a neighborhood store in Mexico; cartel members sought to use it to sell drugs, and the father refused.
- After the respondent returned to Mexico in 2011, cartel members repeatedly approached him, attempted to recruit him to sell drugs through the store, fired shots from a car, and attempted to kidnap him.
- The respondent reentered the United States and alleged persecution on account of membership in a proposed particular social group: the immediate family of his father.

## Issues

1. Whether the proposed group, “the immediate family of the respondent’s father,” qualifies as a cognizable “particular social group” under the INA.
2. How the requirements of immutability, particularity, and social distinction apply to family- or kinship-based groups.
3. Whether the agency may treat nuclear families as inherently cognizable particular social groups without case-specific evidence of social distinction.

## Decision

- The Attorney General overruled the agency’s recognition of the respondent’s father’s immediate family as a cognizable particular social group on this record.
- The Attorney General held that, although some family units may qualify, most nuclear families are not inherently socially distinct and therefore will not qualify absent evidence of social distinction in the relevant society.
- The Attorney General left undisturbed the prior conclusion that the respondent failed to show the required nexus between the harm and a protected ground, and thus the denial of asylum was upheld.

## Legal Principles

- A particular social group must be (1) composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic, (2) defined with particularity, and (3) socially distinct within the society in question.
- Family- or kinship-based groups are not exempt from the social-distinction requirement; adjudicators must conduct a fact-based inquiry into whether the proposed family unit is perceived as distinct in the relevant society.
- Targeting by a criminal organization does not, by itself, transform a set of victims into a particular social group.
- Harm driven by instrumental criminal aims (e.g., recruitment, coercion, control of a business) may fail the nexus requirement when the protected characteristic is incidental rather than a central reason for the persecution.

## Conclusion

The Attorney General limited recognition of family-based particular social groups by requiring case-specific proof of social distinction for the proposed family unit and affirmed the denial of asylum where the record showed cartel targeting primarily for criminal objectives rather than on account of family membership.


Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019)