Juan Ramirez-Acosta v. PAMELA J. BONDI, Attorney General of the United States

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted March 4, 2025 *
Decided March 11, 2025
Before
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
NANCY L. MALDONADO, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1961
JUAN RAMIREZ-ACOSTA,
Petitioner,
v.
PAMELA J. BONDI, Attorney General
of the United States,
Respondent.
Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals.
No. A206-016-389
O R D E R
Juan Ramirez-Acosta, a Mexican citizen, petitions this court to review the Board
of Immigration Appeals’ denial of his motion to reconsider the underlying denial of his
request for relief under the Convention Against Torture. Ramirez-Acosta, however,
waived the lone argument he now seeks to pursue by not raising it first before the
Board. We therefore deny his petition.
* By prior order, we granted the parties’ joint motion to waive oral argument.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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No. 24-1961 Page 2
I.
Ramirez-Acosta entered the United States in July 2002, at age 17. In 2015, the
Department of Homeland Security charged him with removability under 8 U.S.C.
§ 1182(a)(6)(A)(i) for being present in the United States without being admitted or
paroled.
Ramirez-Acosta conceded removability but applied for withholding of removal
under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A), as well as
protection under the Convention Against Torture, or, alternatively, voluntary
departure. His counsel asserted that Ramirez-Acosta feared persecution based on his
membership in a particular social group consisting of “member[s] of a family that has
been targeted for … extortion and harm.”
At the removal hearing, Ramirez-Acosta traced his fear of returning to Mexico to
several circumstances. First, he stated that he would be in danger if returned because
criminal cartel organizations would target him for kidnapping based on the assumption
that people who live in the United States are wealthy. He conceded that he had never
personally been targeted by any cartel organization, but he described incidents in which
his grandparents, who live in central Mexico, were victims of ransom demands (he says
they were called by unknown persons and told to supply cash in exchange for the
release of detained family members). He admitted, though, that the ransom demands
turned out to be scams because nobody was kidnapped during the incidents.
Ramirez-Acosta also testified that his grandparents were robbed at gunpoint but were
not physically harmed.
In support of his application, Ramirez-Acosta submitted the Department of
State’s 2019 Human Rights Report for Mexico, as well as the Department of State’s
April 2019 travel advisory for Mexico noting an increased risk of violent crime, such as
kidnapping and robbery. Although his claims stemmed from crimes committed against
his grandparents, Ramirez-Acosta did not submit a written statement from them. When
asked about the absence of such a statement, Ramirez-Acosta said that he did not seek
any documentation because his grandparents were “elderly” and “afraid of getting
involved.”
The Immigration Judge (IJ) denied all relief. He first concluded that
Ramirez-Acosta did not qualify for withholding of removal under the INA because he
failed to show a substantial probability that his life or freedom would be threatened in

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No. 24-1961 Page 3
Mexico. The IJ reasoned that although crime may be a major issue in Mexico, nothing in
the record, other than Ramirez-Acosta’s testimony, supported his assertion that he
would be targeted for crime. And even if Ramirez-Acosta did show that he would be at
risk of harm if he returned to Mexico, the IJ explained, nothing in the record showed
that the harm would be based on membership of a particular social group. Next, the IJ
rejected Ramirez-Acosta’s request for protection under the Convention Against Torture
because his fear of torture stemmed from crime in Mexico generally and crimes
committed against his grandparents; there was no evidence showing that
Ramirez-Acosta, if returned to Mexico, would face a substantial risk of torture. Lastly,
the IJ found that Ramirez-Acosta’s criminal history (convictions for domestic battery
and driving under the influence) did not warrant voluntary departure.
Ramirez-Acosta appealed the IJ’s decision, but the Board of Immigration Appeals
dismissed the appeal. The Board agreed with the IJ’s finding that Ramirez-Acosta failed
to show that he was at risk of harm by being a member of a particular social group or
that he would be targeted for torture. The Board also concluded that Ramirez-Acosta
waived his challenge to the denial of his request for voluntary removal because he
failed to develop an argument that the IJ erred in his decision.
Instead of petitioning this court for review of the Board’s decision,
Ramirez-Acosta moved the Board to reconsider its adverse decision. He argued that the
IJ and Board ignored evidence supporting his claims for protection under the INA and
Convention Against Torture, namely the Department of State’s Human Rights Report
and travel advisory that he attached to his application. The Board denied the motion to
reconsider, concluding that Ramirez-Acosta merely attempted to relitigate his case by
raising the same arguments that were previously considered and rejected and that he
failed to point to any errors made by the Board. This petition for review followed.
II.
In his petition for review, Ramirez-Acosta argues that the IJ and Board erred by
conflating the analysis for relief under the INA and Convention Against Torture.
According to Ramirez-Acosta, the IJ and Board abused their discretion by failing to
analyze his claims separately under the INA and Convention Against Torture. Instead,
he maintains, they rejected his claim under the Convention Against Torture based
solely on evidence that he presented for relief under the INA.

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No. 24-1961 Page 4
The difficulty for Ramirez-Acosta is that he waived this argument by failing to
present it first to the Board. To properly exhaust an argument and avoid waiver, the
argument “must be actually argued in the administrative proceedings.” Nyandwi v.
Garland, 15 F.4th 836, 841 (7th Cir. 2021) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
But in his motion for reconsideration, Ramirez-Acosta argued only that the Board failed
to consider the totality of the record—a sweeping claim that, he believed, confirmed his
eligibility for relief under the INA and Convention Against Torture. This totality-of-the-
record argument, however, differs markedly from the narrower argument he now
presses—that the IJ and Board failed to engage in separate analyses under the INA and
Convention Against Torture. Because Ramirez-Acosta waived the lone argument that
he now seeks to pursue, we must deny his petition. See id. at 841–42.
This conclusion would remain even if Ramirez-Acosta did properly raise his
argument before the Board. We review the Board’s denial of a motion to reconsider for
abuse of discretion, which occurs when the decision “was made without a rational
explanation, inexplicably departed from established policies, or rested on an
impermissible basis” like invidious discrimination. Vyloha v. Barr, 929 F.3d 812, 815 (7th
Cir. 2019) (internal quotation omitted). The Board did not abuse its discretion here. It
reasonably concluded that Ramirez-Acosta’s motion for reconsideration was an attempt
to relitigate his claims that were previously considered and rejected. Indeed, Ramirez-
Acosta’s totality-of-the-record argument that he raised in his motion for reconsideration
was essentially the same argument that the Board considered and rejected in its
underlying dismissal—that is, Ramirez-Acosta failed to meet his burden of establishing
relief under either the INA or the Convention Against Torture.
For these reasons, we DENY Ramirez-Acosta’s petition for review.

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