18-1716

Singh v. Barr

BIA

Cassin, IJ

A206 034 873

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

SUMMARY ORDER

RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION 

TO A SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED 

AND IS GOVERNED BY FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS 

COURT’S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1. WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT 

FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX 

OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION “SUMMARY ORDER”). A 

PARTY CITING TO A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON ANY PARTY 

NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals 

for the Second Circuit, held at the Thurgood Marshall 

United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of 

New York, on the 30th day of September, two thousand twenty.

PRESENT:

JON O. NEWMAN,

JOSEPH F. BIANCO,

WILLIAM J. NARDINI,

Circuit Judges.*

_____________________________________

GURMEET SINGH,

Petitioner,

v. 18-1716

NAC

WILLIAM P. BARR, UNITED STATES

ATTORNEY GENERAL,

Respondent.

_____________________________________

FOR PETITIONER: Gurmeet Singh, pro se, S. 

Richmond Hill, NY.

* Circuit Judge Peter W. Hall, originally a member of the panel, 

is currently unavailable. Circuit Judge Jon O. Newman has 

replaced Judge Hall on the panel for this matter. See 2d Cir. 

IOP E(b).
2

FOR RESPONDENT: Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney 

General; Ann M. Welhaf, Attorney, 

Office of Immigration Litigation, 

United States Department of 

Justice, Washington, DC.

UPON DUE CONSIDERATION of this petition for review of a 

Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision, it is hereby 

ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the petition for review 

is DENIED.

Petitioner Gurmeet Singh, pro se, a native and citizen 

of India, seeks review of a May 11, 2018, decision of the BIA 

affirming a July 24, 2017, decision of an Immigration Judge 

(“IJ”) denying Singh’s application for asylum, withholding of 

removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture 

(“CAT”). In re Gurmeet Singh, No. A 206 034 873 (B.I.A. May 

11, 2018), aff’g No. A 206 034 873 (Immig. Ct. N.Y. City July 

24, 2017). We assume the parties’ familiarity with the 

underlying facts and procedural history.

In lieu of filing a brief, the Government moves for 

summary denial of Singh’s petition for review. Rather than 

determine if the petition is frivolous as required for summary 

denial, see Pillay v. INS, 45 F.3d 14, 17 (2d Cir. 1995), we 
3

construe the Government’s motion as its brief and deny the 

petition on the merits. 

Under the circumstances of this case, we have reviewed 

the IJ’s decision. Mei Chai Ye v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 489 

F.3d 517, 523 (2d Cir. 2007). The standards of review are 

well established. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B); Hong Fei Gao 

v. Sessions, 891 F.3d 67, 76 (2d Cir. 2018). The agency may, 

“[c]onsidering the totality of the circumstances . . . base 

a credibility determination on the demeanor, candor, or 

responsiveness of the applicant,” the plausibility of his 

account, and inconsistencies in his statements or between his 

statements and other evidence, without regard to whether they 

go “to the heart of the applicant’s claim.” 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii); see Xiu Xia Lin v. Mukasey, 534 F.3d 

162, 163–64 (2d Cir. 2008). “We defer . . . to an IJ’s 

credibility determination unless, from the totality of the 

circumstances, it is plain that no reasonable fact-finder 

could make such an adverse credibility ruling.” Xiu Xia Lin, 

534 F.3d at 167; accord Hong Fei Gao, 891 F.3d at 76. 

Singh provided inconsistent statements during his 

credible fear interview and testimony regarding which of the 
4

two alleged beatings he suffered on account of his membership 

in the Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar Mann Party (“Mann Party”)

he attempted to report to the police, and he did not provide 

any explanation for these discrepancies when he was offered 

an opportunity to do so.1 Singh now argues that he was 

reasonably confused about the timeline because the two 

attacks were similar and close in time. But he did not 

present this explanation to the IJ, and this new explanation 

is not compelling because the timeline was not complicated 

and because of the specificity of his conflicting claims and 

denials. See Majidi v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 77, 80 (2d Cir. 

2005) (“A petitioner must do more than offer a plausible 

explanation for his inconsistent statements to secure relief; 

he must demonstrate that a reasonable fact-finder would be 

compelled to credit his testimony.” (internal quotation marks 

1 Singh does not challenge the IJ’s reliance on the record of 

his credible fear interview. Regardless, the interview 

record was sufficiently reliable because it contained a clear 

and detailed summary of the questions and Singh’s responses, 

the questions were designed to elicit the details of Singh’s 

claim, and there was no suggestion that Singh was intimidated 

or did not understand the translator. See Ming Zhang v. 

Holder, 585 F.3d 715, 723–25 (2d Cir. 2009); Ramsameachire v. 

Ashcroft, 357 F.3d 169, 179–80 (2d Cir. 2004).
5

omitted)). 2 Moreover, the IJ reasonably concluded that 

Singh’s testimony regarding his and his father’s 

participation in the Mann Party was “vague.” When pressed 

for details about his father’s involvement, Singh did not 

clearly state when his father had joined the party. Singh 

also failed to provide details regarding his own role in the 

party. 

Having questioned Singh’s credibility, the IJ reasonably 

concluded that Singh failed to rehabilitate his testimony 

with reliable corroborating evidence, and that the absence of 

corroboration further undermined his credibility. See Biao 

Yang v. Gonzales, 496 F.3d 268, 273 (2d Cir. 2007) (asylum 

2 The IJ may have erred in relying on a discrepancy in the 

record regarding Singh’s educational history without first 

offering him an opportunity to explain it because it may not 

have been obvious and “trivial differences in the wording of 

statements describing the same events are not sufficient to 

create inconsistencies,” especially where, as here, the 

applicant “rel[ies] on an interpreter [or translator] to 

convey his story.” Gurung v. Barr, 929 F.3d 56, 61 (2d Cir. 

2019); see Ming Shi Xue v. BIA, 439 F.3d 111, 125 (2d Cir. 

2006) (“[A]n IJ may not rest an adverse credibility finding 

on non-dramatic putative contradictions or incongruities in 

an alien’s narrative without first giving the applicant a 

chance to reconcile the testimony.”). Even if this were 

error, however, remand would not be required because the 

record contains “statements that are so inconsistent that we

can be confident that the agency would not accept any kind of 

explanation.” Gurung, 929 F.3d at 62.
6

applicant’s failure to corroborate may bear on his 

credibility “because the absence of corroboration in general 

makes an applicant unable to rehabilitate testimony that has 

already been called into question”). Even accepting Singh’s 

argument that the IJ should not have discounted the two 

affidavits in the record based on their similarities—which he 

argues might have been expected since the two accounts were 

recorded by the same notary on the same day in both English 

and Punjabi—the IJ did not err in assigning these affidavits 

diminished weight because Singh’s wife is an interested party 

and neither affiant was available for cross-examination. See

Matter of H-L-H- & Z-Y-Z-, 25 I. & N. Dec. 209, 215 (B.I.A.

2010) (finding that unsworn letters from the applicant’s 

friends and family did not provide substantial support for 

the applicant’s claims because they were from interested 

witnesses not subject to cross-examination), overruled on 

other grounds by Hui Lin Huang v. Holder, 677 F.3d 130, 133–

38 (2d Cir. 2012); see also Y.C. v. Holder, 741 F.3d 324, 334 

(2d Cir. 2013) (deferring to agency’s decision to give little 

weight to letter from applicant’s spouse in China); cf. Mei 

Chai Ye v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 489 F.3d 517, 526 (2d Cir. 
7

2007) (suggesting that the Court would view “skeptically” an 

adverse credibility determination based on similarities 

between documents in different proceedings without a showing 

that the IJ considered “whether it is plausible that different 

[affiants] . . . , for illiteracy reasons, conveyed [truthful 

information] to a scrivener tied to an unchanging style” and 

“whether the same translator converted valid accounts into a 

peculiarly similar story”); Surinder Singh v. BIA, 438 F.3d 

145, 148 (2d Cir. 2006) (“nearly identical language” in 

affidavits from purportedly different authors undermined 

petitioner’s credibility). Moreover, Singh’s wife’s

affidavit was not reliable because it omitted mention of an 

alleged June 2015 incident in which members of the opposing 

Congress Party came to her house looking for him and 

threatened her; Singh did not offer a compelling explanation 

for that omission, and this was an event that his wife would 

reasonably have been expected to include in her statement. 

See Hong Fei Gao, 891 F.3d at 78 (“[T]he probative value of 

a witness’s . . . silence on particular facts depends on 

whether those facts are ones the witness would reasonably 

have been expected to disclose.”). These affidavits were the 
8

only evidence corroborating Singh’s claim that both of his 

parents were murdered: Singh did not present his father’s 

death certificate, and his mother’s death certificate did not 

state her cause of death or otherwise corroborate Singh’s 

claim that Congress Party members beat her to death. 

Singh also failed to present reliable corroboration of 

his medical treatment, since the doctor’s letter was prepared 

four years after the alleged treatment and did not indicate 

that it was based on contemporaneous medical records. Singh 

argues that the IJ erred to the extent that she relied on the 

absence of a notarization or a copy of the doctor’s 

identification in assigning weight to the doctor’s letter,

but we afford IJs “considerable flexibility in determining 

the authenticity of . . . documents from the totality of the 

evidence.” Shunfu Li v. Mukasey, 529 F.3d 141, 149 (2d Cir. 

2008). Singh’s argument that the IJ could have called the 

doctor to obtain testimony is unavailing because Singh had 

the burden to prove eligibility for relief and present 

evidence “without prompting from the IJ.” Chuilu Liu v. 

Holder, 575 F.3d 193, 198 (2d Cir. 2009). 

Given the inconsistencies in Singh’s account of the 
9

events surrounding his attacks, his vague testimony regarding 

his and his father’s involvement in the Mann Party, and his 

failure to reliably corroborate his claims, the IJ’s adverse 

credibility determination is supported by substantial 

evidence. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii); Xiu Xia Lin, 

534 F.3d at 165–67. We do not reach the agency’s alternative 

burden holding because the adverse credibility determination 

was dispositive of all of Singh’s claims, which rested on the 

same discredited factual predicate. See Paul v. Gonzales, 

444 F.3d 148, 156–57 (2d Cir. 2006); INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 

U.S. 24, 25 (1976) (“As a general rule courts and agencies 

are not required to make findings on issues the decision of 

which is unnecessary to the results they reach.”).

For the foregoing reasons, the petition for review is 

DENIED. All pending motions and applications are DENIED and 

stays VACATED.

FOR THE COURT: 

Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe,

Clerk of Court