We granted petitioner’s unopposed motion to waive oral 

argument. Thus, the petition for review is submitted on the

briefs and record. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f).

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 10-3673

YAN LIN,

Petitioner,

v.

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., Attorney General

of the United States,

Respondent.

Petition for Review of an Order of

the Board of Immigration Appeals.

No. A 98 997 626

SUBMITTED JUNE 29, 2011 —DECIDED AUGUST 30, 2011 

Before COFFEY, FLAUM, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

MANION, Circuit Judge. Yan Lin left her home in

China’s Fujian province to seek asylum in the United

States based on allegations that family-planning
2 No. 10-3673

authorities forced her to have an abortion. An immigration judge (“IJ”) denied the application, concluding that,

although Lin credibly testified to having an abortion, she

failed to establish that it was involuntary. The IJ’s assessment of Lin’s credibility turned on Lin’s submission of

hospital certificates that purportedly documented her

forced abortion, which, he concluded, suggested that

the procedure was actually voluntary. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed that decision. It agreed

with the IJ that, absent other evidence explaining the

certificates, our reasoning in Huang v. Gonzales, 453

F.3d 942 (7th Cir. 2006), a case which also involved

the validity of a Chinese abortion certificate, justified

the adverse credibility finding. We conclude that the

Agency overstated our holding in Huang and in doing so

provided an incomplete and unsupported assessment of

Lin’s credibility. We therefore grant the petition for review.

At her hearing before the IJ, Lin described the circumstances leading to her abortion. She testified that, in

1992 when she was 20 years old, she moved in with

her boyfriend and soon became pregnant. She decided

to keep the baby even though Chinese law forbade unmarried women to have children, and after a few months,

Lin’s parents were warned that their salaries would be

cut if Lin refused to terminate the pregnancy. Despite

this threat, Lin still wanted to keep the baby, so she

took sick leave from her own job at a movie theater

and moved to the countryside to stay with her grandmother. But these efforts to evade authorities were unsuccessful; four family-planning officers discovered Lin

at her grandmother’s house when she was nearly six
No. 10-3673 3

months pregnant. She tried to flee, and when that failed

she begged the officers to leave her alone. The officers

ignored her pleas and forced her to accompany them to

a hospital that was about an hour from her grandmother’s home. At the hospital, doctors examined her,

and she was then locked overnight in a room with

other women. The next morning someone at the hospital

forced Lin onto an operating table and gave her an injection in her stomach. Sometime the next day she began

to experience contractions, and after hours of labor,

the premature baby was stillborn. Her family took her

home two days later.

Lin also told the IJ about the emotional and physical

consequences of her abortion. She testified about debilitating depression, strained personal relationships, and

an inability to keep a steady job. Although the IJ

would conclude otherwise, Lin testified that she was not

allowed to return to her job at the movie theater

after the abortion. And her situation deteriorated more

beginning in 1997 when she experienced an ectopic pregnancy, which she says doctors attributed to a mistake

in the abortion procedure five years earlier. At that

point she learned that it would be difficult for her to

have children in the future; with this news, her boyfriend abandoned her, and potential suitors refused to

consider marrying her. These events, Lin said, prompted

her to seek asylum in the United States.

Lin corroborated her claim of a forced abortion with

two types of evidence. She attached a letter from her

mother confirming her version of events as well as two
4 No. 10-3673

documents that she said were issued by the hospital. One

of those documents was an outpatient medical record

from the Lianjiang County Red Cross Hospital stating

that the procedure was “due to pregnancy without marriage.” The other document was a “disease certificate”

bearing insignia from the same hospital, stating that her

“diagnosis” was abortion. Neither document specifies

whether the procedure was voluntary; they merely state

that Lin had an abortion and recommend two months

of bed rest. Lin testified that the hospital supplied

these documents as a matter of course, not on request,

when she was discharged.

In response to these hospital documents, the government submitted the State Department’s 2007 country

profile of Chinese asylum claims. That profile says the

United States Embassy is “unaware of any so-called

‘abortion certificates’ ” and that it knows of no circumstance where Chinese women received certificates after

a forced abortion. It adds that “[a]ccording to Embassy

officials, the only document that might resemble and

be confused with such a certificate is a document issued

by hospitals upon a patient’s request after a voluntary

abortion.” That certificate, the report explains, would

aid a Chinese woman’s request for time away from

work following a voluntary abortion.

The IJ denied Lin’s request for asylum after determining that she was not entirely credible. He noted

that, although Lin’s testimony that she had an abortion

was “100 percent accurate” and her description of her

relationship with her boyfriend was “extremely credi-
No. 10-3673 5

ble,” he nonetheless disbelieved her contention that the

procedure was involuntary. The IJ concluded that he

was compelled to disregard Lin’s otherwise credible

testimony because she had submitted an abortion certificate from the hospital that performed the procedure.

The IJ reasoned that the certificate, when coupled

by the State Department’s understanding that such certificates exist only in cases of voluntary abortions, destroyed the credibility of Lin’s assertion that the

abortion was forced. The IJ also found that Lin could

have returned to her position at the movie theater and

added this factor as further evidence that Lin’s abortion

was voluntary. And most significantly, the IJ told Lin

that, even though he didn’t want to send her back to

China, he had to deny her request for asylum “as a

matter of law” because of our decision in Huang, which

the IJ thought “directly contradicted” her claim. In

Huang the IJ relied on a similar abortion certificate

and the same comments from the State Department as

the basis for discrediting the petitioner’s testimony that

his wife had been subjected to an involuntary abortion.

Huang, 453 F.3d at 944. We upheld the decision and

reasoned that the abortion certificate and the country

profile together provided substantive evidence that the

abortion was not forced and that “without additional

corroborating evidence, the IJ was entitled to find [the

petitioner’s] testimony implausible.” Id. at 947.

The Board affirmed the denial of Lin’s application for

asylum. It did not rely on the IJ’s findings that Lin could

return to her previous job at the movie theater (a

correct decision since the IJ’s conclusion on this point
6 No. 10-3673

appears to stem from a misunderstanding of Lin’s testimony), but it did agree with the IJ that the reasoning

in Huang supported the adverse credibility finding.

The Board also endorsed the IJ’s decision because Lin

failed to “provide adequate corroborating evidence to

contradict the 2007 profile.”

Lin’s overarching contention on appeal is that the IJ

erred in concluding that our decision in Huang required

the denial of her application for asylum. Lin primarily

challenges the IJ’s analysis, but the Board adopted

and supplemented that decision, so we review both.

Surganova v. Holder, 612 F.3d 901, 904 (7th Cir. 2010).

Lin’s claim is fundamentally a challenge to the Agency’s

adverse credibility finding, which we must defer to if

it is “supported by specific, cogent reasons that bear a

legitimate nexus to the finding.” Toure v. Holder, 624 F.3d

422, 429 (7th Cir. 2010) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). The credibility finding fails to

satisfy even this highly deferential standard because

it is based on an inaccurate understanding of circuit

precedent. See Torres v. Mukasey, 551 F.3d 616, 626 (7th

Cir. 2008).

We start with the IJ’s decision. Like the Board, we set

aside the IJ’s erroneous conclusion that Lin was able

to return to her job at the movie theater after her

abortion because nothing in the record supports this

conclusion; the only testimony was to the contrary. Once

we set aside this conclusion, the only remaining reason

the IJ gave for disbelieving Lin’s claim was that our

decision in Huang compelled him to do so. But that
No. 10-3673 7

reason cannot be characterized as “cogent” because it

overstates the holding in Huang. Although we upheld in

Huang the IJ’s decision to consider an abortion certificate

as substantive evidence that could adversely affect an

applicant’s credibility, that decision was not an edict

requiring an adverse credibility finding in every case

involving an abortion certificate. In fact, we explicitly

allowed for the possibility that the negative inference

of the certificates could be overcome with “additional

corroborating evidence.” Huang, 453 F.3d at 947. As

an example of the type of evidence that might suffice,

we noted that Huang, whose wife had allegedly

suffered an involuntary abortion, would have had a

“stronger and more sustainable” claim if he had provided

a supporting affidavit from his wife, who would have

had first-hand knowledge of the abortion. Id.

Thus, instead of viewing Huang as a decision

mandating an adverse credibility finding in Lin’s case,

the IJ should have treated it as an invitation to assess

whether Lin, despite her first-hand knowledge of the

circumstances of her own abortion, could be required to

provide additional proof that she suffered a forced abortion. Of course, the IJ didn’t need such an invitation

because, under the REAL ID Act, Pub. L. No. 109-13, 119

Stat. 231 (2005), he was permitted to require Lin to

supply corroborating evidence as long as the evidence

was reasonably obtainable. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii);

Krishnapillai v. Holder, 563 F.3d 606, 618 (7th Cir. 2009).

Besides her own detached and apparently credible testimony on the matter, Lin did provide one piece of corroboration in the form of a letter from her mother, but
8 No. 10-3673

the IJ failed to acknowledge this evidence or consider

what additional information Lin might reasonably have

supplied. This shortcoming in the IJ’s analysis appears

to stem from the mistaken impression that, in light of

Huang, no amount of corroboration would have been

sufficient to rebut the negative inference of the abortion

certificate.

The IJ’s rote application of Huang to Lin’s case is also

problematic because it suggests that an IJ may base an

adverse credibility finding on country reports alone. We

have repeatedly condemned this sort of over-reliance on

generalized statements of country conditions. See, e.g.,

Bace v. Ashcroft, 352 F.3d 1133, 1139 (7th Cir. 2003) (cautioning against use of generalized reports to contradict

witness’s specific testimony); Galina v. INS, 213 F.3d 955,

958-59 (7th Cir. 2000) (concluding that agency erred

in giving conclusive weight to State Department report). Here, Lin correctly points out that the State Department cannot comprehensively assess conditions

throughout China, so the Embassy’s lack of familiarity

with any hospital issuing abortion certificates following

a forced abortion cannot rule out the existence of such

a practice, particularly dating back to 1992. Our decision

in Huang acknowledges this limitation in the country

reports. We noted that the reports are “not as well-researched or informative as we might wish,” but nonetheless recognized their usefulness as evidence tending

to suggest that “a certificate shows only a voluntary

abortion.” 453 F.3d at 947. But that is all the report

is—evidence. Neither the country report nor our

decision in Huang to uphold an IJ’s use of the country
No. 10-3673 9

report can be sufficient to destroy an asylum applicant’s

credibility as a matter of law. Because the IJ mistakenly

attributed this level of significance to our decision in

Huang and, by extension, to the State Department’s

report, we cannot conclude that his credibility finding

was supported by substantial evidence.

The Board’s decision does nothing to materially

change our view of the IJ’s overall credibility finding.

The Board adopted the IJ’s reasoning, and added that

the adverse credibility finding was justified because Lin

failed to provide corroborating evidence to contradict

the State Department’s interpretation of the abortion

certificate. But as we alluded to above, the Board may

require corroboration only when it is reasonable to do

so. Krishnapillai, 563 F.3d at 618. Here, Lin provided an

affidavit from a family member to corroborate her own

testimony. We cannot envision other readily available

evidence that might have helped prove the forced nature

of her abortion, especially when the IJ found her testimony about her strenuous efforts to avoid the abortion

as being credible. Also, the Board did not identify any

such evidence that it found lacking. In order to deny

Lin’s claim for asylum based on a lack of sufficient corroboration (beyond the mother’s letter), the Board

needed to both explain why it was reasonable to expect

further corroboration and account for Lin’s failure to

provide it. Tandia v. Gonzales, 487 F.3d 1048, 1054-55 (7th

Cir. 2007). Neither the Board nor the IJ considered either

of these factors, so the Board’s additional reasoning that

Lin failed to corroborate her claim is insufficient to

justify the decision to deny asylum.
10 No. 10-3673

Because the Agency’s credibility determination was

based exclusively on an over-broad understanding of

our decision in Huang, we cannot uphold the denial of

asylum as being supported by substantial evidence. We

therefore VACATE the Board’s order and REMAND for

a fresh assessment of Lin’s credibility.

8-30-11