By Gretchen Schuldt

Threatened by gang members at gunpoint in El Salvador, W.G.A. fled to the United States, where he was picked up by the Department of Homeland Security, denied asylum by an immigration judge and the Immigration Appeals Board, and wrongly returned by the United States government to El Salvador while his federal court appeal was pending.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last week gave the man another chance, rejecting the reasoning the Immigration judge and board gave when they turned down W.G.A.'s request and returning the case to the Board for further proceedings.

The government, while finding credible W.G.A.'s story about death threats from an El Salvadoran gang, rejected his pleas to remain in the United States. While he was indeed persecuted, the government argued, his persecution was not due to one of the five grounds that could keep him in this country: “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The appeals panel disagreed. W.G.A.'s family is a particular social group, and he was threatened because of his membership in it.

W.G.A. was threatened by the Mara 18 gang because his brother tried to leave it, U.S. Circuit Judge David Hamilton wrote for a three-member panel that also included Circuit Judges Diane Sykes and U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee. 

W.G.A. and his family members are not identified  beyond initials in court filings, most of which are not available to the public.

"The Mara 18...is one of the two main gangs operating in El Salvador," Hamilton wrote. "Together with their rivals, MS‐13, the Mara 18 terrorize the Salvadoran population and government. The gangs use violence to exercise an enormous degree of social control over their territories, dictating where residents can walk, whom they can talk to, what they can wear, and when they must be inside their homes."

The gangs put together labor strikes and plotted to bomb government buildings. They extort millions of dollars from businesses  and, Hamilton wrote, "they are largely responsible for El Sal‐ vador’s homicide rate — one of the highest in the world." 

One day in 2014, when both brothers were still in El Salvador, W.G.A.'s brother, identified only as S.R.P., did not come home from a trip to the store. W.G.A. and his mother looked for him to no avail. They guessed that S.R.P. had been forcibly recruited by a gang.

They didn't hear from him until they got a phone call a few months later. He was crying and said he could not talk long because the gang might kill him, Hamilton wrote. Then he hung up.

S.R.P. was arrested a few months later and was released from prison in 2015. He called W.G.A. to say he did not want to be in a gang anymore and did not want to tell W.G.A. where he was going. Then he was gone.