IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 15-60726

Summary Calendar

TINGTING YE,

Petitioner,

v.

JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL,

Respondent.

Petition for Review of an Order of the

Board of Immigration Appeals

BIA No. A206 124 761

Before REAVLEY, OWEN, and ELROD, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

Tingting Ye, a professing Christian and a native citizen of the People’s 

Republic of China, petitions for review of a decision by the Board of 

Immigration Appeals. The Board’s decision upheld the Immigration Judge’s

determination that Ye was not eligible for asylum, withholding of removal, or 

relief under the Convention Against Torture. Because we conclude that the 

Immigration Judge’s and Board’s decisions were not based on a full and fair 

 

* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH 

CIR. R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

August 17, 2017

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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consideration of Ye’s case, we GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the 

Board’s decision, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this 

opinion.

I.

Ye testified that she grew up on an island in Fujian, China, where she 

began attending Christian gatherings at the age of sixteen, and eventually 

converted to Christianity. Three years after she began attending Christian 

gatherings, Ye was present at a meeting that was raided by local police. 

Though Ye escaped arrest, the police confiscated Bibles, destroyed a cross, and 

arrested meeting attendees, including Ye’s aunt, and severely beat those who 

were arrested.

Ye testified that, after the raid, police came looking for her at her home. 

Ye went into hiding at the home of her uncle, who lived in another village. A 

few days later, her mother told her that Ye’s photograph had been posted on 

the village bulletin board, together with pictures of other church members and 

a notice that those pictured should turn themselves in to the authorities for 

their crimes. Ye believed that if she stayed on her island she would eventually 

be jailed and beaten like the other Christians whom the authorities 

apprehended. On two occasions, Ye went to a government office on the 

mainland to obtain a passport, but her application was confiscated and she was 

told that she could not get a passport because she was not allowed to leave her 

island. Ye concluded from this and from the notice posted in her village that 

she had been blacklisted for her participation in unauthorized Christian 

meetings. 

Because local authorities were continuing to search for Ye and she could 

not obtain a passport under her own name, Ye testified that her extended 

family paid smugglers to obtain a passport for her under a false name, and she

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used the passport to flee to the United States. Ye joined a Christian church

and was baptized. She testified that she now attends Sunday worship, Sunday 

school, and a Friday Bible study each week.

Ye filed an application for asylum, withholding of removal, or relief 

under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), voluntarily disclosing that she 

fled China on a false passport. A few months later, she was charged with 

removability on the ground that she was admitted to the United States as a 

student but had not attended school. Ye admitted the allegations and repeated 

her request for relief on the grounds of religious persecution.

In support of her application for relief, Ye sought to corroborate portions 

of the testimony summarized above. The Immigration Judge admitted letters 

by two Christians from Ye’s village who described how the police raided a 

Christian meeting on the date Ye specified, confiscated Bibles, broke a cross, 

arrested and beat Christians, and publicly posted photos identifying 

Christians. He also admitted a letter from Ye’s pastor in the United States, 

who stated that Ye was active in his church and was planning to be baptized 

and to become a church member. The Immigration Judge excluded five

identifying documents that contained Ye’s photo and name on the ground that 

the English versions of the documents were not accompanied by certifications 

that the translator was proficient in both languages. Finally, the Immigration 

Judge heard testimony by Ye’s cousin, Ms. Chen, that Chen’s mother had told 

her of the events Ye described; that Chen’s mother-in-law, who lives on Ye’s

island, had shared similar stories of persecution by local authorities; that when 

Ye came to America she moved in with Chen, talked with her about 

Christianity, and asked her for help finding a church; that Chen and Ye were 

baptized together; and that Chen and Ye attended church meetings every 

Friday and Sunday.

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The Immigration Judge found that Ye had not demonstrated her 

eligibility for asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT relief. He acknowledged 

that the events Ye described “would be enough to establish a case of past 

persecution.” However, the Immigration Judge made a general determination 

that “the respondent is not a credible witness.” The Immigration Judge went 

on to explain two grounds for denying Ye’s application. First, “[s]ince I have 

found the respondent to be an incredible witness, I will not accept her 

testimony as to her true identity.” Because the record did not contain other 

evidence corroborating her identity, the Immigration Judge explained, Ye had 

failed to establish who she was, as required by Matter of O-D-, 21 I & N Dec. 

1079, 1082 (BIA 1998). See also Afatika v. Holder, 312 F. App’x 626, 627 (5th 

Cir. 2009). Second, “[b]ecause the respondent is not a credible witness, I find 

that the events that she described did not actually occur and therefore there is 

no basis to grant asylum [or other relief].”

Ye appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, challenging the 

Immigration Judge’s adverse credibility determination in several ways, 

including on the grounds that it was not supported by the record, ignored 

corroborating evidence, and characterized her testimony as implausible and 

inconsistent without adequate reason. The Board dismissed her appeal in a 

short order that adopted the Immigration Judge’s adverse credibility 

determination. The Board upheld the credibility determination based on “the 

problems within the respondent’s testimony and between her testimony and 

supporting documents, as identified by the Immigration Judge.” In light of this

adverse credibility determination, the Board held that it was not unreasonable 

for the Immigration Judge to reject Ye’s petition based on her failure to 

corroborate the posting of her photograph and summons for arrest with a 

statement from her mother.

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Ye now petitions for review of the Board’s decision and challenges its

adoption of the Immigration Judge’s adverse credibility determination.

II.

Because the Board’s decision adopts the Immigration Judge’s credibility 

analysis, we review the Immigration Judge’s decision as well as the Board’s. 

See Wang v. Holder, 569 F.3d 531, 536 (5th Cir. 2009). Although “[t]he 

testimony of the applicant may be sufficient to sustain the applicant’s burden 

without corroboration,” this is only the case “if the applicant satisfies the trier 

of fact that the applicant’s testimony is credible . . . .” 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii); see also 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c)(2) (“The testimony of the 

applicant, if credible, may be sufficient to sustain the burden of proof without 

corroboration.”). It is the factfinder’s duty to make determinations based on 

the credibility of witnesses, and we cannot substitute our judgment for that of 

the Board or Immigration Judge with respect to factual findings based on 

credibility determinations. Chun v. INS, 40 F.3d 76, 78 (5th Cir. 1994). 

However, we may not accept an adverse credibility determination 

“blindly.” Kabamba v. Gonzales, 162 F. App’x 337, 339 (5th Cir. 2006). We 

review for “substantial evidence” and must assure ourselves that the agency 

decision was based on a “full and fair consideration of all circumstances” and 

“reflect[s] meaningful consideration of the relevant substantial evidence 

supporting the alien’s claims.” Zhang v. Gonzales, 432 F.3d 339, 344 (5th Cir. 

2005); Abdel-Masieh v. United States INS, 73 F.3d 579, 585 (5th Cir. 1996). An

adverse credibility determination will not be upheld if it is “based on pure 

speculation or conjecture.” Wang, 569 F.3d at 537. Rather, it “must be 

supported by specific and cogent reasons derived from the record.” Zhang, 432 

F.3d at 344.

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III.

The Immigration Judge concluded that Ye was not credible and that Ye 

had not provided sufficient corroborating evidence to support her claims. We 

do not attempt to exhaustively address the Immigration Judge’s litany of 

concerns, but provide the following examples to show that the Immigration 

Judge relied on speculative and conjectural reasoning and failed to consider all 

relevant evidence. Given this, we cannot conclude that the Immigration 

Judge’s credibility determination gave “full and fair consideration” of Ye’s 

claim. See Abdel-Masieh, 73 F.3d at 585.

The Immigration Judge relied on a series of speculative conclusions 

regarding the veracity of Ye’s faith. For example, the Immigration Judge found 

that “it would not have been possible” for Ye’s pastor to “have made a wellinformed decision” about whether Ye “was an actual practitioner.” Similarly, 

the Immigration Judge sought to undercut Ye’s religious commitment by 

criticizing the level of detail she provided regarding her baptism. According to 

the Immigration Judge, Ye “provided no details about either how the baptism 

went, what the concepts behind it were, or how she came to the decision to be 

baptized,” and so “th[e] significant conversion that [Ye] indicates that she 

underwent is not correlated with the level of detail that one would have 

expected for a person who has gone through such a significant transformation 

of their personal life.” And finally, the Immigration Judge found it implausible 

that Ye would have decided to be baptized at a church she had only been 

attending for six weeks. According to the Immigration Judge, because baptism 

is a “significant event for anybody,” it was implausible that Ye would “have 

reached this decision in this amount of time” because this “is not the timeframe 

that is normally taken for such a significant event in somebody’s life.”

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These judgments are wholly unsupported by evidence, and involve 

speculation wholly outside the proper purview of the Immigration Judge. The 

Immigration Judge offered no concrete basis to support its conclusion that Ye’s 

pastor was incapable of assessing the genuineness of Ye’s faith, nor did the 

Immigration Judge provide any reliable basis for concluding that Ye’s limited 

description of baptism and her decision to be baptized somehow fails to 

correlate with the significance of her conversion. Not that it is proper for the 

Immigration Judge to assess such a “correlation” in any event. Likewise, the 

Immigration Judge relied on nothing more than raw conjecture in concluding 

that the timeframe within which Ye decided to be baptized at her current 

church does not fit the “normal[ ]” time allotted for significant life events. Not 

one of these speculative conclusions was based on concrete evidence, and all of 

them involve inquiries into matters emphatically outside the competency of a 

government administrator. See Employment Div., Dep’t of Human Res. of 

Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 887 (1990) (“Repeatedly and in many different 

contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine the place 

of a particular belief in a religion or the plausibility of a religious claim.”). 

Other aspects of the Immigration Judge’s opinion are also concerning. 

For example, the Immigration Judge cast doubt on Ye’s claim that a Christian 

gathering she was attending was raided by the Chinese police, but the 

Immigration Judge failed to consider the letters submitted from two Chinese 

Christians who corroborated Ye’s account of the raid. See Adjonke v. Mukasey, 

255 F. App’x 914, 915–16 (5th Cir. 2007) (vacating and remanding where BIA 

failed to take account of letters that would have supported applicant’s 

testimony); Liu Xiu Fang v. Holder, 465 F. App’x 338, 342 (5th Cir. 2012) 

(vacating BIA determination for failure to discuss relevant evidence). 

Similarly, the Immigration Judge concluded that Ye’s testimony regarding the 

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timing of the alleged raid was “highly suspicious” because the alleged raid 

“immediately followed [Ye’s] graduation from high school.” According to the 

Immigration Judge, this close temporal proximity between her graduation—

“right at the time when she is trying to decide what to do with her life”—and 

the alleged raid strongly suggested that Ye fabricated the raid in order to gain 

passage to the United States for economic reasons. This conclusion, however, 

is entirely speculative. See, e.g., Cai Gui Chen v. Filip, 308 F. App’x 785, 787 

(5th Cir. 2009) (“The IJ’s suspicion that the Chen family came to the United 

States for economic reasons only was not based on record evidence and thus 

did not constitute substantial evidence.”). Finally, the Immigration Judge also 

thought it implausible that Ye had been placed on a “blacklist” due to her 

involvement in a Christian church, given that the passport authorities did not 

detain her when she went to obtain a passport. But we have previously held

that “[a]pparent inconsistencies in treatment by various government officials 

provide an insufficient basis to deny asylum where a person has suffered 

persecution at the hands of some such officials.”1 Kabamba, 162 F. App’x at 

342.

In assessing an adverse credibility determination, we are mindful that 

our role is not to substitute our judgment for that of the Board or Immigration 

Judge, Chun, 40 F.3d at 78, but neither will we give our stamp of approval to 

credibility determinations “based on pure speculation or conjecture.” Wang, 

569 F.3d at 537. We must instead ensure that adverse credibility 

determinations are grounded in a “full and fair consideration of all 

 

1 The Immigration Judge also criticized Ye for providing “a remarkably little amount 

of detail” about house gatherings of underground Christians, faulting her for not identifying 

other participants, disclosing what they discussed at their meetings, what materials they 

used, where they met, and how far their houses were from one another. In fact, Ye did provide 

information on these subjects. And in any event, we fail to see the relevance of a failure to 

volunteer the contents of underground church discussions.

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circumstances” and “reflect meaningful consideration of the relevant 

substantial evidence supporting the alien’s claims.” See Abdel-Masieh, 73 F.3d 

at 585.

Here, the Immigration Judge—and the Board in affirming the 

Immigration Judge’s ruling—based their credibility determinations on 

unfounded conclusions regarding whether Ye’s pastor could assess the 

genuineness of her faith, and whether Ye’s decision to be baptized and her level 

of understanding of her faith were correctly “correlated” to the Immigration 

Judge’s view of the impact her conversion should have had in her life. Such 

matters are well outside the federal government’s competency, and these 

conclusions were not “supported by specific and cogent reasons derived from 

the record.” Zhang, 432 F.3d at 344. Likewise, the Immigration Judge’s failure 

to consider the corroborating letters from Christians in Ye’s home province and 

its reliance on a belief that Ye fabricated a story of persecution to fulfill her 

economic desires do not reflect a “full and fair consideration of all 

circumstances” and a “meaningful consideration of the relevant substantial 

evidence supporting the alien’s claims.” See Abdel-Masieh, 73 F.3d at 585.

In summary, the decisions of the Immigration Judge and the Board 

failed to reflect meaningful consideration of substantial evidence that 

corroborated Ye’s testimony and included numerous findings of fact that are 

not supported by specific, cogent reasons derived from the record. Given the 

flaws underlying the Immigration Judge’s credibility determination, and 

because we cannot determine the extent to which these errors influenced the 

Immigration Judge’s determinations as to Ye’s credibility and, relatedly, her 

identity,2 the Immigration Judge’s and Board’s rulings cannot stand. See, e.g., 

 

2 Ye authenticated her high school diploma, her junior high school diploma, her 

elementary school diploma, her residential ID card, and her student ID at the hearing. The 

Immigration Judge explicitly stated in his decision that he was not excluding these

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Adjonke, 255 F. App’x at 915–16 (vacating and remanding where “not 

convinced that [petitioner] received full and fair consideration of the 

circumstances giving rise to his claims”). 

IV.

Accordingly, we GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the Board’s 

decision, and REMAND for reconsideration consistent with this opinion.

 

documents based on a failure of authentication. Given that the documents were authentic 

diplomas and ID cards, the only information that had to be culled from them in order to verify 

Ye’s identity was her photo and her name. The photo obviously did not need to be translated, 

and the record showed what Ye’s name looked like in Chinese so that the Immigration Judge 

could have recognized it without translation. Moreover, the Immigration Judge could easily 

have directed the court translator to translate the documents at the hearing so that he could 

give meaningful consideration to the corroborating evidence Ye attempted to provide.

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