you know i would like to begin by thanking you for taking this case as a pro bono wire and for doing a very good job of course of  i mean it's a crazy case i mean he has an incredibly complicated story he tells it quite consistently but he we also know he has severe mental health problems that have to do with delusions and paranoia and all that so my understanding you believe that what happens true now so are there to questions about that one is we've never approve or disapprove that provision that ruling are you challenging it you're not no your honor i'm not going so we're going to soon that it's  governing so i don't see how you can just take the ordinary credibility rules and unplug a man well your honor i believe that is the one of the major questions before this court because no circuit court has yet reviewed how matter of j r r a would be applied with credibility rules as we understand it as i understand what happened here and i'm going to simplify i just want to deal with past persecution and fear for the future persecution put aside whether it was on account of a protected status cetera what the i j a and the b i a did was say with respect to your past persecution claims who assume everything you're saying is true it doesn't amount to past persecution yes your honor the i j a indiait did say that however the standard that they applied shows that they were essentially requiring physical harm and i know we have but i just want to that's not a that's not a lack of credibility determination that's you're arguing here there wasn't substantial evidence to support that conclusion that's correct your honor i just want i want to focus on the credibility thinker stick with respect to the second per second claim is that are you saying he had passed persecution but even if i didn't have a reasonable fear future persecution with respect to that one as i understand what the b i a n e i j did was they didn't they did make a credibility determination and their credibility determination was well we we we we grant that you believe what you say is true but given the other revenants in the record we don't find objective way that is that you really do have a fear future future persecution so aren't the two separate analyses one doesn't volved credibility the other one does not well your honor i think that's reading a bit more into the idea is opinion because the i j a has a section on credibility and in that section the i j a doesn't explicitly make a credibility finding beyond saying that they find that the i j a found my client to be subjectively genuine in his belief of the version of right when it when he gets to whether or not you are liable to face persecution in the future he you're tapping into the fundamental problem underlying the id's opinion here which is that the i j a essentially said i'm going to find you subjectively genuine as a safeguard under matter of j r a but i simply don't believe you and i can't do that well i thought what country conditions evidence that he submitted which states that members of mexican organized crime operate with impunity and thus are unlikely to do that but he but he was saying that that his grandfather and his father and his mother in law his saying that you have to meet your burden of proof based on the objective evidence of record and there isn't any objective evidence that any of these people had anything to do with the mexican mafia is there your honor if the i j a wanted  find against you you need these three pieces of evidence you've testified that you can obtain these three pieces of evidence i'm going to continue the case so that you can submit this evidence had a hearing later on and at that later hearing the argument exhausted  i would say yes your honor and the brief below my client argued in a substantial portion of his brief that he submitted sufficient corroborating it ends and i would say that under this court's precedent which essentially says you have to put the b i on notice of what you're arguing and on the other hand it seems to me the burden was on your client to establish that they were was not yes your honor but also never want to get back to the credibility issue because this is where you started he listens to your client and says i think you believe what you're saying is true but i don't believe you and so at that point is near enough as in your quiet field in this burg he made a very specific credibility finding your as you say i heard you i think i think you believe all story you know you have mental illness it's an outlander story i'm sure you've imagined it as he doesn't say those words is precisely what he said comes pretty close but i just don't really think that's what happened why isn't that a good enough in terms of the specificity of findings sensible said a lot of things but she didn't say any of these people were members of exit him up in your honor she did say that she fears if he were to be returned to mexico that he would accuse the wrong person and harm and be harmed and that in fact she believes if you were sent back to mexico it would be the equivalent of a death sentence and that may have been all she was comfortable saying and that's what's very sad about this case which may be true because the guy is so rare it appears i mean the other thing that struck me about the  here is that he did keep telling the same story in very great detail several different times very consistently which would ordinarily lead to a credibility determined yes your honor and that's why i think the credibility piece is so critical here because under this court's precedent and under most immigration cases when typically all we have to go on is the applicant's individual belief and that's why credibility finding is so important under these saying we know you have mental health problems we know you're delusional i believe you me believe everything you said but some portion of it i find so implausible that unless you come up with some objective evidence i'm not i believe that there is there is some procedural requirement that he should need to spell out why don't why yes your honor and that's where i would put direct the court back to randy holder which explicitly states what procedure the i g should have followed says i don't find you credible yes later that's what our subsequent case law says right yes you're on the i j a here says this story i'm sure you believe this story but it's so outlandish that i don't find you credible  and there's no objective evidence that it's true so under those circumstances those run apply yes your honor i think that the i n a in particular provides two options either an idea explicitly makes an adverse credibility finding or the applicant is presumptively credible on appeal right he makes as you said he made and had worse may not have been sufficiently supported that's a separate issue he made an adverse credibility funding i disagree your honor i don't think the i j a made an adverse credibility believe him or that i don't find him credible on this point on the basis that they're not it's not the same as not believing there's a there's a whole section of the i j a opinion entitled credibility right and they are not one says the i j a say that my client is not credible and that 's the main point that i want to highlight emphasize according says very specifically i'm sure he's not lying in the sense that he he does he's not making up the story he believes it to be true but the court finds many of the details of test response testimony are difficult to believe and appear like to be appear to be the result of his mental health difficulties that they're courting that the court must look to the objective evidence to see whether he and he die don't find any so he doesn't find the incredible he says he's not credible and he hasn't provided any objective evidence to support his case i think it's a fair reading of that section is i respectfully disagree your honor because i think when you look at the immigration and nationality act which for which sets up this binary system and you look at you know this court's precedent as well as matter of j r a all of them point to only two options which is sincere fellow will these stories reflect no doubt his illness i cannot reach the bottom line in his favor which clearly the who said well your honor i would just state all or should we skip right to cat because it seems hard to try to come up with a cognizable social graph and also why is the past persecution determination wrong or your honor to start with  first of all the court could find under the cat relief without having to find the nexus requirement but i do believe the court could also find that he was member of it at least to particular social groups legally cognizable groups which were members of martinez soto family who have cooperated with law enforcement and also government informants against mexican organized crime and i would say that based on several of this court's prior opinions which have found very similar groups to them we've been really hard nosed about this maybe too much so but the one that the bank case they got the whole point was that this person was actually testified right she was a known person hence this meet up with that well your honor i would state by him walking into several police stations in mexico and consistently stating that his family members were members of the mexican mafia he was openly identifying himself as someone who was willing to inform against the mexican organized crime groups and therefore he as his expert report says painted a target on his back for anyone who is a member of these mex and organized groups which want to operate in the  this one it could still be viable for the reasons i've stated in my brief but i also think that he also clearly fits into the family one but in an odd way it's you're not claiming it's because he's a member of the marking his family he had asked the police for help on multiple occasions and i would submit that contrary to that the times when he asked the police for help the not specifically tied to what he claims is his persecution and instead there are the instances such as a police officer accepting  home we know that they actually protected him in the end well your honor i would respectfully disagree that they protected him he made such a commotion that he called attention to himself and then the police officers as they released him said don't come back here will kill you honor but then there's a continuing pattern of each time he tries to x seek help from the police they push back in some manner such as the police officers who say ok get out of here you know or we'll kill you ourselves and other police officer say who say we don't want you may please the court chris begin for the united states government subjectively genuine testimony is not the same as objective truth and it is that fella see that position builds his argument upon for the reason his for any specific objective evidence he didn't even give an indication from the way in which he analyze the evidence which stories he didn't believe in which stories he did poorly so it was very  say at some point well maybe you want to get more evidence but he didn't give anybody a clue as to what it was he was believing what he wasn't on strictly plausibility grounds in other words this is you know a long and complicated story and as i said before he was of j r a if the looking at the framework of matter j r e which which is a narrowly tailored tailored effect against the pool that is applicants who have some kind of underlying cognitive defect that creates a distortion in their testimony jr a requires only that where that distortion may arise from the underlying cognitive defect the immigration judge may not penalize the applicant for the distortion in the same way that that would accrue in the some underlying due process like problem with and i'm not sure it matters here because he ultimately went on and us at least for purposes or past persecution assumed the story anyway but the with regard to future persecution he seemed to weigh the mexican mafia connection and once you do that certainly he has his well founded fear goes away so maybe we should focus on that i mean the one thing that he clearly rejected on the ground that there wasn't objective evidence was that any of these people that he said had are connected to the mexican mafia were connected to the mexican mafia now but he didn't tell him that until after the whole case was over so how was he supposed to know which  story and this is an act of the asli a huge part of his long story was being which oftentimes cannot assess the credibility until the entire case is closed all the evidence is in and only the second circuit may be right read may have been incorrectly decided we're in a nine year old and we're and we're we're stuck or we will follow it stuck is the wrong word because that makes it seem like we reject it so if in fact we are applying read tell me why it doesn't apply here it doesn't apply here because the credibility determination that when dealt with is not present here in ren the adversary more so i mean that the problem here is that you have somebody who you have now determined actually believes what he said so how at but you because of the intricacies of the story the i j a says you know just thinking about how these pieces fit together i don't i know you believe that i know well to be specific i know you believe that these people are all members of the next of kin mafia your grandfather your father your mother in law and so on and i believe that you believe it but i don't  that he wasn't in jail in mexico i mean i held his first you know what you find possible and not plausible you want to look at the evidence that he did present i'm sorry the evidence that he did present the objective evidence we have a medical record from a read mexico that reflects nothing except his fear that his grandfather was trying to poison and we have a trouble hearing you could you yes i'm sorry is this better there is the the objective evidence in this case is is remarkably sparse for someone who spent more than two years in mexico the court has presented with a mexican health record areas mental health problems yes your honor but the mental the objective evidence judge found was the primary caregiver and martinez present circumstances and yet there's no indication whatsoever of any retaliatory motive by the family based on two thousand and five events nor is there any reference to  the sort of sinister subversive criminal there is in his testimony yes your honor but oh so the question so i agree that brigitte he presented some evidence other than his testimony and that evidence didn't support the mexican mafia contention the question and i don't know the answer to it under red in this strange circumstance where the with the i g says never says it in any other circumstance i believe you think everything you're saying is true but i don't find it to be true that's what the i g did here essentially and he said one reason i don't find it to be true it's an incredible story and you have mental health problems but none of the stuff you've given me supports that's correct your honor there's ran in that circumstance impose an obligation to say now that you know that you have anything else i don't think so your honor and the reason is that counsel appointed by the although i believe you believe what you said i'm not going to accept anything any part of your story just because you say it and if that's what they are a means at least it's coherent and then you have to go and put on evidence a framework by not specifically requiring the immigration judge to sort out what is and what is not considered plausible but that framework has not been is not in contest it's not before the court and it may be that there is a case  it is harder to see what more the agency could have provided for the petitioner in this case this time it is hard to see what more the agency could provide in terms of safeguards that we have a seventy page decision by the immigration judge we have counsel provided at all levels we have more to pull continuances we have the immigration judge what i want to know is let's assume because the i g did his long and perhaps implausible story why does he then but i guess that's what the i j a did with regard to past persecution right your honor that's that is the basis of the board that is the portion of the immigration judges in that the board that border from that's basically all of it with a right to pass persecution and the other the part that he specifically discounted is that these people belonged to the mexican mafia which was the future persecution purposes i think that's right your honor he actually sort of divided past persecution he said everything you've testified to if i take is true doesn't establish persecution and then he says he does make a it your honor is correct it does not matter it doesn't in this case it doesn't matter what you do with tell me why why his claims fail because well you're one of these well if tak true you have an applicant who consistently interacts with the mexican police across four different towns across a seven month period in two of those circumstances he is colocated with the assassins that we're that he states were released him first separate apart from his family and in the in the incident they actually place him in protective custody at his request his testimony is at my request and so while there is there is a there is a passage of money if we take that test minister we have to say what do we do about money changing hands in the court i'm going to jail but but it is beyond dispute that he was released by police separate apart from his family he is rich he was released first which enabled him to get to the police station and so his his his claims against the police so that they took money from his grandfather although they certainly didn't enable any kind of harm against him and then also they took his own money because he had to torture claim as well so if there is substantial evidence in this record to support that because there's if you take his story is true that along the way people said no don't worry we're not after you police so for example a man with a blotto he he says even after they dropped him off at the outskirts of the city limits a police cruiser came by and then and then he heard on the radio that they shouldn't help him because he's a violent rape right now there would be evidence maybe and maybe susceptible  interpretations yes you're saying that there is there is evidence in the record even taking his story is true that would support the idea conclusion about the participation of the police either past or future yes  are at best at best you have two competing narratives and under the circumstances this record does not compel the conclusion of future torture or future or past persecution i just think closing i would i would point out only nevertheless somehow be transmitted into an object of lee historical accurate record and under the a we just established none of that matters another words yes or are we that's right that there are multiple subjectively genuine but then look to the objective evidence we are contesting how the i j a then proceeded to apply the case why doesn't well it would matter if you were and why don't we have to start this case by assuming as to why change in that his story is true yes your honor and decide whether you would prevail if it were true yes you're on your side whether there was some   confrontation or other mistreatment can constitute past persecution and i think that that case isn't particularly instructive here because of the person was in that case that we still have the an able or unwilling acquiescence problem yes your honor and for that i would say that contrary to the government's characterization the mexican police helped him only when he asked about certain charges that were filed against him but repeatedly did not help him whenever he was seeking  reprieve from his persecutors who followed him throughout the multiple towns and so that's and i would go again he went up and keep the protective custody because these people are after me and they said ok but then you're out of the same police officers allowed them access to him in fact told