As I said back in January, the petitioner here is definitely a sympathetic one, and is a "Honduran kid who 'repeatedly spurned the Mara gang's entreaties to join its ranks despite death threats made against him and his family'" but who the United States now intends to sent back to Honduras and this gang.
Even though the panel was (somewhat) sympathetic to his plight, there was no dissent -- everyone agreed that his claims should be rejected.
The Ninth Circuit as a whole perhaps felt the sympathetic -- and legal -- pull a bit more strongly than the members of the panel. Today, it takes the case en banc.
