On September 4, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District (the Court) held that the United Nations Convention against Torture (CAT) protected a transgender immigrant from deportation to Mexico. Edin Avendano-Hernandez, a transgender woman from Mexico, had petitioned the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to withhold her removal to Mexico based on the physical and sexual abuse by police and military officers she experienced there. The Court agreed with the BIA’s finding that Avendano-Hernandez’s felony conviction for driving under the influence and causing bodily harm to another (California Vehicle Code § 23153(b)) constituted a “particularly serious crime” because the offense was an “inherently dangerous activity, [as it] has the potential for great harm to the driver and all others encountered” and as such would usually make her ineligible for withholding of removal. Regarding the CAT claim, the Court disagreed with the BIA’s decision that Avendano-Hernandez had failed to demonstrate that she was at risk of facing torture upon her return to Mexico, noting that “[t]orture is defined, in part, as ‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person . . . for any reason based on discrimination of any kind’” and concluding that “[r]ape and sexual abuse due to a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, whether perceived or actual, certainly rises to the level of torture for CAT purposes.” The Court found that Avendano-Hernandez provided credible testimony that she was sexually assaulted by police and military officers in uniform, thereby proving that upon her return to Mexico “she is more likely than not to be tortured . . . by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.” The Court also disagreed with the BIA’s finding that Mexico’s passage of laws to protect its gay and lesbian citizens was sufficient to rule out any further incidents of torture. The Court found that “the agency’s analysis, however, is fundamentally flawed because it mistakenly assumed that these laws would also benefit Avendano-Hernandez, who faces unique challenges as a transgender woman” and was therefore “based on its factual confusion as to what constitutes transgender identity.”