Docket: IMM-15380-24
Citation: 2026 FC 63
Ottawa, Ontario, January 15, 2026
PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice Duchesne
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BETWEEN: |
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DAVID ARTURO MIRANDA MALDONADO |
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Applicant |
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and |
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THE MINISTER OF IMMIGRATION, REFUGEES AND CITIZENSHIP |
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Respondent |
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
[1] The Applicant seeks judicial review of a decision [Decision] made by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada’s [IRB] Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] on August 1, 2024. The Decision upheld of the Refugee Protection Division’s [RPD] decision that the Applicant was not a Convention refugee nor a person in need of protection within the meaning of sections 96 and 97 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [IRPA]. The Applicant claimed that he feared for his safety in Mexico due to acts of violence by a cartel. The determinative factor for both the RPD and the RAD was the existence of an internal flight alternative [IFA] location in Mexico.
[2] The Applicant argues that the Decision is unreasonable because the RAD incorrectly determined that he had not identified his agents of harm despite his reasonably held belief as to their identity, and because the RAD made reviewable errors in determining that the proposed IFA location was appropriate.
[3] The Court finds that the Decision is reasonable and justified in light of the facts and the applicable law. The Applicant has not persuaded the Court that the Decision is unreasonable. This application is therefore dismissed for the reasons that follow.
I. Background
[4] The Applicant is a citizen of Mexico. He was self-employed and operated a catering business in Veracruz prior to fleeing from Mexico and arriving in Canada.
[5] The Applicant claims that he fled Mexico and his home in Veracruz because he feared for his safety due to the threats and acts of violence from the “Cartel”.
[6] The Applicant claims that he was the victim of robbery and extortion in 2013. The Applicant asserts that in or about November 2013, at about 2:00 am, he was returning home from a catering engagement at a wedding with his wife and young daughter in his truck. A silver vehicle was parked perpendicular to his house. Despite the car’s tinted windows, the Applicant declares that he could make out that there were three or four men sitting in the car. Two men got out of the car. One man carried a gun and the other a machete. The men approached him before issuing threats. Both had visible tattoos on their arms. One of the two men stole the Applicant’s truck along with all of his belongings inside, including the 10,000 pesos he had just earned from his catering work. The other man returned to the silver car and drove off. The Applicant reported the incident to the police the next day.
[7] The Applicant affirms that both he and his wife began to receive telephone calls from unknown persons on their personal phones within days of the truck being stolen. The callers were attempting to extort money from them but did not identify themselves. The calls consisted of statements that the callers knew where the Applicant lived and that he should be careful about what he reported to the police unless he wanted to put his life at risk. The calls also suggested that the Applicant could be killed if the callers had to seek revenge against him The Applicant claims that the calls continued progressively for several years, but that he and his wife ignored them. The Applicant believes that the calls were made by the persons who stole his truck. The Applicant never had any in-person contact with any of the callers. The Applicant did not report or testify to any incidents arising from or connected to the calls he and his wife ignored. The calls eventually ceased.
[8] In or about 2016-2017, the Applicant and his family moved into a two-storey rented house in Veracruz. Shortly after their move, the Applicant stepped out of the house around midnight one day and saw two persons sitting in a luxury vehicle parked across the street. The Applicant noticed that the vehicle’s occupants had many tattoos. The vehicle’s occupants asked the Applicant whether he was the owner of the house he had just walked out of. The Applicant replied that he did not live at the house and had only been delivering a package. The Applicant got into his vehicle, drove down the street and waited approximately 30 minutes until the vehicle had left before returning home.
[9] The Applicant claims that another similar incident occurred a few weeks later.
[10] In February 2020, the Applicant’s wife’s car was hit by a driver who appeared to be drunk, and the car was declared a total loss. The car was towed by a local towing service provider. A few days later, the Applicant received a call from an unknown and unidentified caller demanding the Applicant pay “them”
the insurance monies from his claim for the totaled car, or else “they”
would burn down the totaled vehicle that continued to be in the towing service provider’s possession. The Applicant ignored the call. The Applicant’s insurer informed him that it would not pay out the insurance monies because neither the Applicant nor his spouse were able to prove that they were the owners of the totaled vehicle; it appears that they had misplaced the ownership papers.
[11] The car was later involved in a fire along with other vehicles kept at a tow lot. News reports regarding the incident reflected that the fire was intended to target the lot operator.
[12] The Applicant then began receiving telephone calls at a new telephone number from an unknown number. The unknown caller was asking for the insurance money the Applicant was expected to receive from his claim, failing which the Applicant and his family would be kidnapped and killed.
[13] Extortative telephone calls resumed shortly after the Applicant and his family moved into the two storey house in 2016-2017, ceased for some time, and picked up again in February 2020 after the incident involving Applicant’s wife’s car. The calls stopped during the COVID-19 lockdowns, but started up again after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in Veracruz.
[14] The Applicant believed that he and his family were in a situation where the “Cartel”
was looking to extort the car insurance proceeds from them even though they no longer knew if there would be an insurance money payout at all.
[15] The Applicant testified before the RPD panel that he fears “people from the Cartel”
because they tried to harm him and his family. The Applicant was unable to identify the cartel he fears and was similarly unable to confirm whether the persons who tried to harm him and his family belonged to a cartel at all. Upon being asked to identify his agents of harm, the Applicant answered that the persons who sought to harm him had tattoos and that, in his view, members of cartels, or people perceived to be affiliated with cartels, are regularly covered in “military-style tattoos”
, including tattoos of weapons and skulls. He stated that it is well-known in Veracruz that persons with such tattoos are members of a cartel. The Applicant could not describe any of his assailants’ tattoos in any detail.
[16] The Applicant also testified that he believes that the persons he encountered in 2013 were affiliated with cartels because they looked professional in what they were doing. He stated:
“The way that they talked to me. The things that they knew about me and the demeanour in which they acted. They were very quick and doing what they were there to do. It's almost like they knew what they were there to do. They knew where I lived, they knew the hour that I got in. It made me feel like they had studied me, like these were people that dedicate themselves to working for the cartel. It's, as I said before, the preparation and the way that they were armed, these people knew exactly what they were going to be doing that night.”
[17] The Applicant considers that he was targeted by the “Cartel”
because he worked in social events and would always carry a certain amount of cash on his person.
[18] The Applicant fled to Canada in May 2022 because of the pressure he was feeling from the unidentified callers. Neither the Applicant, nor his wife who has remained in Mexico, have received any extortion threats from unknown callers since he fled in 2022. No other member of the Applicant’s family has been targeted, received extortion threats via telephone calls, or been the victim of a violent crime.
II. The RPD Decision
[19] The RPD found that the Applicant was neither a Convention refugee within the meaning of section 96 of the IRPA, nor a person in need of protection within the meaning of subsection 97(1) of the IRPA. The determinative issue before the RPD was the existence of a viable IFA location within Mexico.
[20] While the RPD considered the Applicant to be generally credible, it had concerns about the Applicant’s speculation regarding the identify of his agents of harm in Veracruz and their motivation to harm him throughout Mexico.
[21] The RPD accepted that the Applicant had experienced acts of violence while living in Veracruz; however, given the widely spaced-out timeframes between the incidents, the unknown identity of the assailants, and the unclear motivation of the assailants aside from monetary gain, the RPD found that the Applicant had not credibly established that the incidents of crime he had experienced were connected or related. The RPD found that it was more likely than not that the Applicant had been a local target of convenience for monetary gain.
[22] The RPD came to its finding by considering the documentary evidence about violence in Mexico generally, the Applicant’s testimony about the unknown identity of his agents of harm, the absence of a clear motivation behind the events, and the time that passed between the events themselves. Correlatively, the RPD found that the Applicant had not credibly established that he had been targeted by a major Mexican Cartel as he alleged in his claim, or that he continued to be pursued in Mexico.
[23] The RPD found that the Applicant had a viable IFA location in Victoria de Durango after it considered that there was no section 97(1) IRPA personalized risk for the Applicant in that IFA location, and, that it was not unreasonable for the claimant to relocate there. Since the RPD found that the Applicant had experienced random criminal acts unrelated to each other, it reasoned that the agents of harm behind these random criminal acts had neither the means nor the organizational capacity to pursue the Applicant to the IFA location.
[24] The RPD found that the Applicant failed to substantiate his belief that his agents of harm, unnamed and unknown, would be motivated to track and harm him in the IFA location. The RPD found that the Applicant’s fears were speculative in nature.
[25] The Applicant did not lead evidence before the RPD to establish that his relocation to the proposed IFA location would be unduly harsh or would involve conditions that would jeopardize his life or safety (Ranganathan v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) (CA), 2000 CanLII 16789 (FCA), [2001] 2 FC 164 [Ranganathan]).
[26] The RPD concluded that the Applicant does not face a serious possibility of persecution nor a risk to life, cruel and unusual treatment or punishment, or torture in the proposed IFA location. The Applicant’s claim was therefore rejected.
III. The RAD Decision
[27] The Applicant appealed the RPD’s decision to the RAD. The Applicant argued that the RPD erred with respect to its assessment of both prongs of the IFA determination. The Applicant also argued that his agents of harm have the motivation and means to pursue him to the IFA, and that the IFA would be objectively unreasonable.
[28] The RAD identified the two-part test set out in Rasaratnam v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), 1991 CanLII 13517 (FCA), [1992] 1 FC 706 as the applicable test to determine whether the Applicant had an appropriate IFA location available to him. The two-part test is that an IFA is available when 1) the Applicant will not be subject to a serious possibility of persecution nor to a risk of harm under section 96 and section 97 of the IRPA in the proposed IFA location; and 2) it would not be objectively unreasonable for the Applicant to seek refuge there taking into account all the circumstances.
[29] The RAD found that the RPD had correctly applied the first prong of the test in its finding that the Applicant’s agents of harm had neither the means nor the motivation to find and harm the Applicant in the IFA location. The Applicant argued that the RPD had erred in not finding that the cartel (unidentified by the Applicant in any event) was his agent of harm.
[30] The Applicant re-argued what he had argued before the RPD and added that it was a reasonable inference based on the totality of the circumstances that the local criminals who might be the Applicant’s agents of harm were affiliated with the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion [CJNG]. No evidence had been led before the RPD or sought to be led before the RAD in support of this argument other than general country conditions that suggest that cartel affiliations are fluid and often change. The Applicant also argued that the RPD had overlooked the significance of the Applicant’s profile as a small business owner, noting that country conditions evidence indicates that cartels routinely target small business owners for extortion.
[31] The RAD agreed with the RPD that the Applicant failed to establish that the agents of harm are members of a cartel or other organized crime group, or affiliated with one, or that the same perpetrators are behind the sequence of events that arose in 2013 and 2020. The RAD found that this conclusion supported the finding that the Applicant had not shown that his agents of harm were motivated to pursue him to the proposed IFA location because, as was held in Morales Esquivel v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2009 FC 468 at para 17, “if the [claimants] do not know the identity of the aggressors’ gang, how could they claim that an unknown gang would target them throughout the whole country?”.
[32] The RAD agreed with the RPD that the Applicant’s belief that his agents of harm are cartel members based on what the Applicant described as their aggressive nature, the fact that they were armed, their physical appearance including tattoos that were not clearly or specifically tied to any cartel or organized crime group, and the fact that there were other people in the silver car when his truck was stolen in 2013, are rooted in speculation and insufficient to establish that the agents of harm were cartel members, or that the 2013 and 2020 incidents were related. The RAD also noted that the Applicant did not identify any errors in these findings by the RPD; the Applicant simply disagreed with them.
[33] The RAD found that the mere fact that the CJNG had a presence in Veracruz at the time of the events was insufficient to establish that the CJNG and its members were the Applicant’s agents of harm. The RAD also found that even if the Applicant was targeted as a small business owner, there was insufficient evidence to establish that it was the CJNG or cartels that engaged in the extortion of persons with a profile similar to his.
[34] The Applicant argued that the RPD failed to correctly apply the second prong of the IFA test because it failed to a) fully assess the reasonableness of the proposed IFA location in light of objective country conditions that reflect that the CJNG has the ability to detect and target returnees to Mexico upon their arrival from Canada, and b) did not consider the high rate of crime and violence in the proposed IFA location.
[35] The Applicant’s first argument was rejected as having no support in the evidence led before the RPD due to the Applicant’s speculation as to the identity of his agents of harm and their relationship to a cartel, much less the CJNG. The Applicant’s second argument was also rejected because the objective documentary evidence led did not support a finding that the rate of crime and violence in the proposed IFA location is so high that it renders the proposed IFA location unreasonable.
[36] In the end, the RAD found that the Applicant had a high burden to demonstrate that the proposed IFA location was unreasonable and that he had not met that burden.
IV. The Issue
[37] The only issue before the Court is whether the Decision is unreasonable.
[38] The Applicant argues that the Decision is unreasonable because:
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a)it incorrectly determined that the Applicant had not identified his agents of harm despite his reasonably held belief as to who those agents are; and,
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b)reviewable errors were made in finding that the Applicant’s agents of harm did not have the motivation to track the Applicant to the IFA location and to harm him there.
[39] The Respondent argues that the Decision is reasonable in light of the facts and the applicable law, and that the Applicant simply failed to meet his onus.
V. The Standard of Review
[40] The parties agree that the applicable standard of review is the reasonableness standard (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] at paras 10, 25). I agree.
[41] On a reasonableness review, the reviewing court considers the reasons provided by the administrative decision-maker and asks whether the decision bears the hallmarks of reasonableness (i.e., justification, transparency and intelligibility) in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that bear on the decision (Vavilov at para 99).
[42] The challenging party bears the burden of establishing that the decision under review is unreasonable due to “sufficiently serious shortcomings in the decision such that it cannot be said to exhibit the requisite degree of justification, intelligibility and transparency”
(Vavilov at para 100). The Court must be satisfied that shortcomings or flaws relied on by the party challenging the decision are more than merely superficial or peripheral to the merits. They must be sufficiently central or significant to render the decision unreasonable (Vavilov at para 100).
[43] A reasonableness review is not a “line-by-line treasure hunt for error”
(Vavilov at para 102). Rather, where “there is [a] line of analysis within the given reasons that could reasonably lead the tribunal from the evidence before it to the conclusion at which it arrived”
the reviewing court will not intervene (Vavilov at para 102).
[44] The Court’s role on judicial review is not to reweigh, reassess or second-guess the evidence (Vavilov at para 124; Doyle v Canada (Attorney General), 2021 FCA 237 at para 3).
VI. Arguments and Analysis
[45] A refugee claimant who has a viable IFA and can therefore seek safe and reasonable refuge within their home country rather than seek Canada’s protection does not meet the definition of a Convention refugee or person in need of protection under sections 96 and 97 of the IRPA (Thirunavukkarasu v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), 1993 CanLII 3011 (FCA), [1994] 1 FC 589 (CA) at pp 592–597 [Thirunavukkarasu], citing at pp 710–711; Sadiq v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2021 FC 430 at paras 38–44; Singh v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 996 at para 7).
[46] A claimant has a viable IFA when 1) they will not be subject to a serious possibility of persecution nor to a risk of harm under section 96 and section 97 of the IRPA in the proposed IFA location; and 2) it would not be objectively unreasonable for them to seek refuge there, taking into account all the circumstances. Both prongs of the IFA test need to be satisfied to conclude that a claimant has an IFA (Bassi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 910 at paras 15-16 [Bassi], citing Rasaratnam and Thirunavukkarasu).
[47] Once the decision-maker identifies an IFA, the onus is on the applicant to establish that the IFA is unreasonable.
[48] Mr. Justice Guy Régimbald explains the burden on an applicant seeking to establish that an IFA is unreasonable in Bassi at paragraph 17 as follows:
[17] On the first prong of the test, the applicants bear the onus of demonstrating that the proposed IFA is unreasonable because they fear a possibility of persecution throughout their entire country. In order to discharge their burden, a claimant must demonstrate that they will remain at risk in the proposed IFA from the same individual or agents of persecution that originally put them at risk. The risk assessment considers whether the agents of persecution have the “means” and “motivation” to cause harm to the claimant in the IFA (Singh v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 996 at para 8 [Singh 2023 FC 996]). The applicants must establish that the agents of harm have both elements: the means and the motivation to cause harm (Ortega v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 652; Leon at para 13). This assessment must be made by the decision maker, is a prospective analysis, and is considered from the perspective of the agents of persecution, not from the claimant’s perspective (Vartia v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 1426 at para 29; Adeleye v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 81 at para 21;Aragon Caicedo v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 485 at para 12). The onus is therefore on the applicants to adduce sufficient evidence or facts to discharge their burden of proof and demonstrate, on a balance of probabilities, that the agents of persecution have the means and motivation to locate them in the proposed IFA and that therefore, they will be subject to a serious possibility of persecution under section 96, or to a likelihood of a section 97 danger or risk in the proposed IFA (Singh 2023 FC 1623 at para 17).
[49] The Applicant advances four arguments in support of his argument that the Decision is unreasonable:
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a)the RAD erred by concluding that the Applicant failed to establish the identity of the agents of harm or the connection between the incidents in 2013 and 2020;
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b)the RAD incorrectly determined that the agents of harm are not motivated to pursue the Applicant to the IFA;
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c)the RAD erred in finding that the IFA of Victoria de Durango satisfies both prongs of the IFA test; and,
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d)the RAD selectively relied on evidence to conclude that state protection Victoria de Durango would be sufficient.
[50] Each of these arguments fail.
[51] The Applicant argues that the RAD made an unreasonable decision by concluding that the Applicant failed to establish the identity of his agents of harm or the connection between the 2013 and 2020 incidents because he believes that his testimony, combined with the ongoing threats, extortion and evidence of cartel activity, should have been sufficient to establish the risk of persecution, regardless of whether he could identify the cartel.
[52] The Court cannot agree.
[53] The Applicant’s evidence, at best, relies on his belief that an unidentified cartel and its members are his agent of harm. The Applicant’s claim is based on the assertion made in his basis of claim form that, “I left my home country because I fear for my safety due to the threats and the acts of violence from the Cartel.”
The Applicant at no point identified who the “Cartel”
he refers to may be, where it operates, how it operates or who its members are. The Applicant confirmed during his testimony before the RPD that there were different persons involved in the 2013, 2016-2017 and 2020 interactions he described as the basis for his claim. There is no evidence that any of these individuals identified themselves as members of any cartel at any point in time.
[54] The Applicant relies on Diaz v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2010 FC 797 [Diaz] and Cruz Salazar v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 1149 [Cruz] in support of his argument that his failure to identify his agents of harm with specificity is not detrimental to his claim. The Court cannot agree.
[55] In Diaz, the applicants could not identify their agent of persecution with any specificity. The Court determined that the fact that the agent of persecution was underdetermined did not negate the probability of risk the applicants alleged they faced if returned to their country nor their credibility with respect to those risks. The facts of that proceeding are significantly different from those of the present proceeding, not least because credible evidence had been led to establish that persons close the applicants, and others who were similarly situated factually, had faced the same type of risk as had been alleged by the applicant. Diaz is distinguishable and does not assist the Applicant.
[56] In Cruz Salazar, the applicant had been approached by individuals who identified themselves as members of a specific and identified cartel, the Los Zetas Cartel, in the course of operating his first business. He ceased that business to avoid extorsion. The applicant was then extorted by another group of individuals in the course of operating his second business. When he inquired further, the applicant had been informed by the local prosecutor that businesses in his area were victims of organized crime. The court considered that these facts were sufficient for the RAD in that proceeding to conclude that the applicant was facing extortion and was being targeted by a cartel, regardless of the name the cartel at issue operated under. There is no similar evidence led by the Applicant in this case. Cruz Salazar does not apply to assist the Applicant.
[57] The Court agrees with the statement at paragraph 22 of Diaz and relied upon in Cruz Salazar at paragraph 14 that the identity of the agent of persecution is relevant to nexus and not to the probability of risk. The probability of risk is not at issue here.
[58] The Applicant’s evidence and assumptions that he is the target of a cartel based on a very general description of military-style tattoos, and tattoos depicting skulls and weapons as well as his subjective appreciation of the manner in which the incidents unfolded over a period of seven years cannot reasonably be considered as establishing that the Applicant is the target of actual agents of persecution in this case. The RAD did not arrive at an unreasonable conclusion when it concluded based on the facts and the evidence led that the Applicant could not and did not identify his agents of persecution with any precision.
[59] As Mr. Justice Sébastien Grammond held in Haider v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 1775 at para 6, while it may be true in theory that one can be a refugee even if the identity of the agent of persecution is unknown, “[…] it is difficult to assess an agent of persecution’s motivation and means if we have no idea of who they are”.
The same reasoning was applied by the RAD in this case. The RAD’s reasoning and conclusion that the Applicant’s failure to identify his agents of persecution on the balance of probabilities undermined his allegations that they are motivated to pursue him to the IFA location are neither unjustified nor unreasonable in light of the evidence led.
[60] The last two arguments advanced by the Applicant must also be rejected because the Applicant did not establish that conditions exist in the IFA which would jeopardize his life and safety to the threshold set out in the jurisprudence (Ranganathan at para 15; Elusme v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2020 FC 225 at para 25 and the cases cited therein). The RAD considered and accepted that the IFA has a not insignificant crime rate as reflected in the national documentation package. The RAD also considered that the IFA is nevertheless the tenth most peaceful region of Mexico. The RAD did not come to an unreasonable conclusion in considering and rejecting each of the Applicant’s arguments concerning general crime, his lack of business connections or support networks in the IFA did not meet the jeopardy threshold required by the jurisprudence.
VII. Conclusion
[61] The Applicant has not persuaded the Court that the Decision is unreasonable or unjustified considering the facts and the applicable law. This application is therefore dismissed.
[62] Neither party suggested that this proceeding gives rise to a serious question of general importance to be certified pursuant to section 79 of the IRPA. No question will therefore be certified.
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