Date: 20100414
Docket: IMM-2449-09
Citation: 2010 FC 408
Toronto, Ontario, April 14,
2010
PRESENT: The Honourable Madam Justice Mactavish
BETWEEN:
JORGE ALBERTO GARCIA CARREON
CONCEPCION BRAVO DIAZ
LUIS ENRIQUE GARCIA
JOSE ALBERTO GARCIA BRAVO
JORGE ALBERTO GARCIA
BRAVO
Applicants
and
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND
IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT AND JUDGMENT
[1]
The applicants’ refugee claims were rejected by the Refugee Protection
Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board. The Board found that the
family’s youngest son, Luis, could safely return to the United States, where he
was born. This finding has not been challenged. The other family members are
Mexican citizens. Their claims were rejected based on the availability of an
internal flight alternative for the family in the Federal District.
[2]
For the reasons that follow, I am satisfied that the Board’s decision
was reasonable. As a consequence, the application for judicial review will be
dismissed.
Analysis
[3]
The family claims to fear individuals associated with a gang leader by
the name of Toribio Gargallo. The principal applicant was a police officer in Veracruz,
and had arrested Gargallo in 1990. As a result, he claims that Gargallo threatened
to harm him and his family. Gargallo and several members of his gang were
killed by police in 1991, allegedly on orders of the former Governor of
Veracruz.
[4]
The principal applicant says that after Gargallo’s death, he and his
family continued to face threats from members of Gargallo’s gang. After shots
were fired at the family’s house in March of 2002, the family moved to the
state of Puebla, where his wife’s sister lived. Later that same month, the
principal applicant left Mexico for the United States, leaving his family
behind. The family later joined him in the U.S. and the family came to Canada
in 2007.
[5]
The Board found it implausible that members of the Gargallo gang would
be interested in looking for the applicants in the Federal District, given that
the family had not lived in Mexico since 2004. Furthermore, there was no
evidence that gang members has ever approached any of the many members of the
applicants’ extended family remaining in Mexico in effort to locate the
applicants.
[6]
The Board also found that there was insufficient evidence before it to
show that the Gargallo gang, assuming that it still existed, had any reach
outside of the States of Veracruz and Oaxaca. This was a conclusion that was
reasonably open to the Board on the record before it.
[7]
Contemporaneous newspaper reports of Gargallo’s death indicate that he
“ruled like a feudal lord in the small farm towns around the city of Cordoba”,
which is located some 200 miles from Mexico City. There was no documentary
evidence before the Board to indicate that the Gargallo gang continued to
exist, or that it ever had any reach beyond Veracruz and Oaxaca. Nor was there
any evidence that the Gargallo gang was ever affiliated with any of the drug
cartels that have proliferated throughout Mexico.
[8]
While the principal applicant says that the gang could find him
anywhere, his evidence on this point consisted of nothing more than the bald
assertion that this was so. The burden was on the applicants to adduce
sufficient evidence to demonstrate that there is no internal flight alternative
available to them in their home country. It was open to the Board to weigh the
evidence before it and to find that the applicants had failed to adduce
sufficient evidence to discharge the burden on them. It was also reasonable
for the Board to find it implausible that members of the gang would have any
on-going interest in finding the family in the Federal District given that
there was no evidence of any attempts to locate the applicants since 2004.
[9]
The Board’s internal flight alternative finding was determinative.
As I have concluded that this finding was reasonable, it follows that the
application for judicial review is dismissed.
Certification
[10]
Neither party has suggested a question for certification, and none
arises here.
JUDGMENT
THIS
COURT ORDERS AND ADJUDGES that:
1. This
application for judicial review is dismissed; and
2.
No serious question of general importance is certified.
“Anne
Mactavish”
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