In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

____________

No. 03-3351

FENG DONG,

Petitioner,

v.

ALBERTO R. GONZALES,

Attorney General of the United States,

Respondent.

Petition for Review of an Order of the 

Board of Immigration Appeals.

No. A77 950 711 

ARGUED DECEMBER 15, 2004—DECIDED AUGUST 31, 2005

Before KANNE, WOOD, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Circuit Judge. Feng Dong, a native and citizen of

China, claims that she was persecuted under China’s onechild policy when Chinese officials forced her to abort her

pregnancy. She applied for asylum, withholding of removal,

and protection under the United Nations Convention

against Torture. The Immigration Judge (IJ) denied all

relief, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) summarily affirmed. The IJ gave multiple reasons for denying

Dong’s petition, all ostensibly relating to credibility.

Because most of those reasons are either not supported by

the record or are not central to her claim, we grant Dong’s

petition for review, vacate the IJ’s decision, and remand for

further proceedings. 
2 No. 03-3351

I

Dong, who is from Fujian province, testified at her

removal hearing that in September 1996, when she was 19,

she confirmed at a local hospital that she was one month

pregnant. She then told her boyfriend, and they decided to

get married. A week or two later, two men and two women

from the village planning office visited Dong at home and

asked her to accompany them to the hospital, for the stated

reason that they wanted to confirm that she was not

pregnant. Dong, her mother, and the four officials walked

about 20 to 25 minutes to the hospital. There, not surprisingly, the officials learned that Dong was pregnant. When

Dong refused to get an abortion, the officials told her that

because she was not married and had not reached the legal

age for marriage they would perform the abortion and then

put her in jail. Although Dong told the officials that she

wanted to keep her child, she underwent an abortion that

day.

 In response to questions from the IJ, Dong said that she

did not know why the officials came to her house, but she

speculated that they had been tipped off about her pregnancy by someone at the hospital where she had recently

confirmed that fact. The IJ asked Dong why, if the officials

already knew of her pregnancy, they would ask her to go to

the hospital to check if she was pregnant. Dong speculated

that the officials used this as an excuse to get her to the

hospital for the abortion. 

In the end, Dong did not marry her boyfriend. She

remained in her hometown until January or February of

2000, when she paid $50,000 to a smuggler for a false green

card, a Social Security number and passport, and travel to

the United States. She made her way to Hong Kong and

then flew from there to the United States. At the Newark

airport, immigration officials determined that she was not

eligible to enter and detained her, finding that she lacked
No. 03-3351 3

valid travel documents and had misrepresented her identity. The next day, during an interview by an officer of the

former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Dong

said that the purpose of her trip to the United States was

“for fun,” but added that she feared returning to China

“because of the one-child policy.” At her hearing she

explained that she was afraid to tell the truth to the

interviewer because she did not trust the United States

government. She also explained that she did not apply for

political asylum at the airport because she did not know the

law in the United States.

Dong testified at her hearing that she did not want to

return to China because she did not want to be persecuted

again. Dong believed that she would be imprisoned in China

“because I came into the United States illegally and that

way it violated their regulation.” Also, she thought that she

would be jailed because after she left China she was not

present for the required annual pregnancy check in her

hometown.

The INS initiated removal proceedings. In October 2000,

Dong requested a change of venue to Chicago. With that

request, Dong’s attorney represented that she sought

asylum, but he did not file a formal asylum application for

her until July 2001. By then, more than a year had passed

since Dong’s arrival in the United States, and as a result

she concedes that she was statutorily barred from asylum

relief. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(B). (Because Dong has not

argued here that her attorney’s informal statement satisfied

the one-year rule, we express no opinion on this point, or on

the question to what extent an applicant for asylum in her

position might perfect an existing application after the

expiration of the one-year period.)

In December 2001 Dong had a hearing before an IJ on her

request for withholding of removal, see 8 U.S.C.

§ 1231(b)(3), and her claim under the Convention Against
4 No. 03-3351

Torture. (On appeal, Dong has abandoned her request for

relief under the Torture Convention.) The IJ denied her

request for relief. He recognized that if Dong could prove

that she was forced to abort a pregnancy, she would

establish a well-founded fear of persecution. He concluded,

however, that Dong did not qualify for relief because her

testimony was not sufficient to establish that it was more

likely than not that she would be subject to persecution if

she returned to China. The IJ never actually said that he

found Dong not to be credible, but he commented that it

was “difficult to believe [Dong’s] account relating to events

central to [her] claim.” The IJ gave two reasons for concluding that her testimony concerning her abortion was “not

plausible”:

1) the Court does not believe that four village officials

would bother to come all the way to the respondent’s

house on foot in order to ask the respondent to go with

them to the hospital to check if the respondent is

pregnant. Such does not seem to be plausible. 2) it is

not plausible that four village officials would walk 20 to

25 minutes from their office to the respondent’s house

and then walk another 20 to 25 minutes to the hospital

with the respondent for a routine hospital examination

to find out if the respondent was pregnant.

The IJ gave no reason for why he thought that the village

officials might not be enforcing the population control rules,

or why walks of this length in rural China were unlikely.

The IJ also found that Dong’s testimony was inconsistent

with the State Department Country Report in four ways.

We note in passing that although the IJ identified the

document that concerned him as a Country Report, the

language that he quoted in his order is from China: Profile

of Asylum Claims and Country Conditions (April 14, 1998)

(Profile). First, Dong testified that she, as a female, could

get married “around 22,” but the IJ noted that the Profile
No. 03-3351 5

states that the minimum age for marriage in China is 22 for

males and 20 for females. The IJ also found that the Profile

contradicted Dong’s testimony, because the Profile reported

that: (1) in Fujian province, the U.S. Consulate General “is

not aware of any forced abortions of illegitimate children or

children of couples with an early marriage”; (2) “on visits to

Fujian province, Consulate General officials found that

strong persuasion through public and other pressure was

used, but they did not find any cases of physical force

actually employed in connection with abortion or sterilization”; and (3) “it has been reported that if a couple conceived a child before the legal marriage, the child would be

treated as if it were born out of wedlock.” 

The IJ also said that he had “particular difficulty” with

Dong’s claim for six additional reasons: (1) she presented

fraudulent documents upon entering the United States; (2)

she did not apply for asylum at the airport; (3) she did not

apply for asylum within a year of her arrival; (4) she did not

corroborate her claim with supporting documents; (5) she

did not submit an affidavit from her mother; and (6) she

remained in China for four years after her alleged abortion

without any problems.

Dong appealed the IJ’s decision, and the BIA summarily

affirmed.

II

Dong is eligible for withholding of removal if she can show

that there is a “clear probability” that she would be persecuted if forced to return to her native country. INS v. Stevic,

467 U.S. 407 (1984); see 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3); Lin v.

Ashcroft, 385 F.3d 748, 751 (7th Cir. 2004). If Dong can

establish that she suffered past persecution, she is entitled

to a presumption, subject to rebuttal by the government,

that her “life or freedom would be threatened in the future

in the country of removal on the basis of the original claim.”
6 No. 03-3351

8 C.F.R. § 208.16(b)(1)(i); see Zheng v. Gonzales, 409 F.3d

804, 810 (7th Cir. 2005); Zaidi v. Ashcroft, 377 F.3d 678,

681 (7th Cir. 2004); Vladimirova v. Ashcroft, 377 F.3d 690,

695 (7th Cir. 2004). Dong alleged that she was persecuted

based on her forced abortion. Congress has expressly

addressed forced abortion in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(42), which

states that a person who has been forced to abort a pregnancy “shall be deemed to have been persecuted on account

of political opinion.” See also Zhang v. INS, 386 F.3d 66 (2d

Cir. 2004). Thus, if the IJ had credited Dong’s claim that

she was forced to have an abortion, she would “automatically [be] entitled to the presumption of a well-founded fear

of future persecution.” Zheng, 409 F.3d at 810; see Lin, 385

F.3d at 757.

When the BIA affirms an IJ’s ruling without opinion, see

8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(4), we review the IJ’s decision directly.

Lin, 385 F.3d at 751. An IJ’s credibility determination is

entitled to great deference. See Uwase v. Ashcroft, 349 F.3d

1039, 1041 (7th Cir. 2003). Nevertheless, we “will not

automatically yield to the IJ’s conclusions when they are

drawn from insufficient or incomplete evidence.” Georgis v.

Ashcroft, 328 F.3d 962, 968 (7th Cir. 2003). An IJ’s credibility determinations “must be supported by specific, cogent

reasons that bear a legitimate nexus to the finding.” Uwase,

349 F.3d at 1041 (internal quotations omitted). 

On appeal Dong challenges each of the IJ’s reasons for

rejecting her testimony. She argues that the IJ’s reasons for

his conclusion were not supported in the record, and that

the documentary evidence the record contained did not

contradict her testimony. Dong concedes that she entered

the United States using false documents, did not apply for

asylum at the airport or within one year of her arrival, and

remained in China for four years after her abortion without

any problems, but she maintains that these facts, either

taken individually or collectively, are not valid reasons for

discrediting her testimony. Finally, Dong argues that
No. 03-3351 7

because her testimony was credible, she was not required to

corroborate it further. 

The IJ found Dong’s story “not plausible,” but his skepticism is not supported by evidence in the record. Dong

offered a reasonable explanation for the village officials’

conduct, stating that the officials had probably learned of

her pregnancy from the hospital where she had her pregnancy test and wanted to take her back to the hospital so

she could have an abortion. The IJ doubted that four

officials would trouble to pay a visit just to see whether

Dong was pregnant, but his opinion on this point is inconsistent with the Profile he cited, which speaks of strong

pressure that officials exert to enforce the family-planning

policies. Moreover, the number of officials who visited Dong

has little bearing on whether her abortion was forced. See

Lin, 385 F.3d at 755 (number of people who took petitioner

to hospital is “a factual point that has little bearing on

whether she was forced to abort her pregnancies”); He v.

Ashcroft, 328 F.3d 593, 600 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Whether five

people or ten people came to take his wife for involuntary

sterilization, it would nonetheless be involuntary.”) There

is nothing in the record that affirmatively supports the IJ’s

assumption that village officials would not act as Dong

described. The IJ’s skepticism alone, in light of Dong’s

consistent testimony, does not support a negative credibility

determination. See Huang v. Gonzales, 403 F.3d 945, 949-

50 (7th Cir. 2005) (portion of IJ’s decision “based entirely on

either the judge’s personal beliefs or some perceived

common knowledge” not proper basis for adverse credibility

finding); Lin, 385 F.3d at 755 (IJ’s skepticism “utterly

unsupported by any fact in the record” insufficient basis for

adverse credibility finding); see also Elzour v. Ashcroft, 378

F.3d 1143, 1153 (10th Cir. 2004) (holding that IJ’s skepticism must be substantiated by record).

The IJ’s finding that Dong’s testimony was contradicted

by the Country Profile is similarly flawed. Although the
8 No. 03-3351

Profile says that the minimum age for marriage in China is

22 for males and 20 for females, it also says that “[i]n some

localities the ages are set higher.” The IJ did not point to

any information showing that the marriage age was not

higher in Dong’s locality. More importantly, whether the

marriage age was 20 or 22 was irrelevant to Dong’s situation, because under either minimum she was too young at

19 to get married when she learned that she was pregnant.

The portions of the Profile on which the IJ relied do not

contradict Dong’s testimony. Although the Profile reports

that U.S. officials had not seen proof of forced abortions, it

notes that Chinese officials “acknowledge that there may be

instances of force being used” to compel a person to submit

to an abortion. And the Profile “could not exclude the

possibility” that couples who married early would be forced

to abort a pregnancy. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, China (released February 2001), lends support to Dong’s testimony.

It states that it is illegal for unmarried women to bear

children and although force is officially prohibited,

intense pressure to meet family planning targets set by

the Government has resulted in documented instances

in which family planning officials have used coercion,

including abortion and sterilization, to meet government goals. During an unauthorized pregnancy, a

woman often is paid multiple visits by family planning

workers and pressured to terminate the pregnancy. In

1998 a former Fujian province local family planning

official stated that local authorities in a Fujian town

systematically used coercive measures such as forced

abortion and sterilization, detention, and destruction of

property to enforce birth quotas.

Neither the Profile nor the Country Report rule out the

possibility that forced abortions occur; thus, the IJ erred in

relying on these reports to find Dong not credible. More-
No. 03-3351 9

over, an IJ should not rely on generalized Profiles or

Country Reports to refute an applicant’s personal experience. See Lin, 385 F.3d at 754; Bace v. Ashcroft, 352 F.3d

1133, 1139 (7th Cir. 2003) (“[I]t would be improper to find

that a witness’s credibility about specific events could be

‘contradicted’ by a generalized State Department report

broadly discussing conditions in the applicant’s country of

origin.”). 

Finally, the remaining reasons that caused the IJ “particular difficulty” are largely beside the point. It is not relevant to Dong’s credibility that she avoided persecution

during the four years she remained in China after her

abortion. For all anyone knows, she did so by avoiding

pregnancy, which is hardly a solution to the problem.

Furthermore, one forced abortion is sufficient to show

persecution; Dong does not have to show a string of such

incidents. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(42); Ding v. Ashcroft, 387

F.3d 1131, 1133 (9th Cir. 2004). 

As for the false documents, the BIA has distinguished

between use of false documents to establish an element of

an asylum claim and the use of false documents for entry

purposes. Although an IJ may find an applicant not credible

when she uses false documents for the former purpose, the

“use of false documents to facilitate travel or gain entry

does not serve to impute a lack of credibility to the petitioner.” In re O-D-, 21 I. & N. Dec. 1079, 1081 (BIA 1998);

see also Yongo v. INS, 355 F.3d 27, 33 (1st Cir. 2004);

Akinmade v. INS, 196 F.3d 951, 956 (9th Cir. 1999).

Because Dong’s use of false documents to enter the United

States has no bearing on whether she was forced to terminate her pregnancy, we reject this reason as a basis for the

IJ to find Dong not credible. 

Dong’s statement to an immigration officer that she came

to the United States “for fun” also troubled the IJ. Airport

interviews, however, are not always reliable indicators of
10 No. 03-3351

credibility. See Huang, 403 F.3d at 950; Balogun v.

Ashcroft, 374 F.3d 492, 505 (7th Cir. 2004). And in Dong’s

case, the airport interview as a whole supports her claim.

Later in the same interview to which the IJ referred, Dong

told the immigration officer that she feared returning to

China because of the one-child policy, suggesting that this

was not a thought that occurred to her only after she

obtained counsel. Finally, her failure to apply for asylum

within one year of her arrival appears to be more relevant

to her attorney’s level of competence than to her credibility.

The IJ gave no weight to counsel’s informal statement, but

to the extent it sheds any light at all on her intentions, it

indicates that asylum was her goal.

Inconsistent statements and failure to file a timely

asylum claim can be valid reasons for finding an alien not

credible, but they cannot save the IJ’s overall determination

in this case. Because the other reasons given by the IJ for

denying relief are either unsupported by the evidence in the

record or not central to Dong’s claim, we decline to affirm

the IJ’s decision on these two weak grounds for finding

Dong not credible. See Huang v. Gonzales, 403 F.3d 945,

950 (7th Cir. 2005) (remanding where court had “misgivings” about all but one of IJ’s reasons for adverse credibility

finding); Georgis, 328 F.3d at 970 (remanding where five of

six reasons given by IJ for discrediting petitioner were

unsupported). 

The lack of support for the IJ’s credibility determination

makes it difficult to evaluate the remaining reasons he gave

for denying her claim—that Dong did not provide any

supporting documents or a letter or affidavit from her

mother in support of her claim. We have held that

“[c]orroborating evidence is essential to bolster an otherwise

unconvincing case,” but when an applicant testifies credibly, “it is not necessary for her to submit corroborating

evidence in order to sustain her burden of proof.” Lin, 385

F.3d at 751 (quoting Uwase, 349 F.3d at 1041); Georgis, 328
No. 03-3351 11

F.3d at 969; see also 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(a) (“The testimony of

the applicant, if credible, may be sufficient to sustain the

burden of proof without corroboration.”)). And in order to

deny asylum relief for lack of corroborating evidence, an IJ

must: (1) make an explicit credibility finding; (2) explain

why additional corroboration is reasonable; and (3) explain

why the alien’s explanation for not producing the requested

corroboration is inadequate. Gontcharova v. Ashcroft, 384

F.3d 873, 877 (7th Cir. 2004); see also Huang, 403 F.3d at

951. Here, the IJ did not explain why additional corroboration was reasonable, and he never asked Dong why she did

not provide supporting documentation. As a result, we

conclude that the lack of corroborating evidence cannot

support the IJ’s decision.

III

For these reasons, we find that the IJ’s decision is not

supported by substantial evidence. Upon remand, if the

agency finds credible Dong’s story that she was forced to

have an abortion, she is entitled to a presumption that she

will be persecuted upon her return to China. See 8 C.F.R.

§ 208.16(b)(1)(I). The IJ will then need to decide whether,

with the benefit of that presumption, she has shown that it

is more likely than not that she would be subject to persecution if she returns to China. We GRANT Dong’s petition for

review, VACATE the IJ’s decision, and REMAND to the BIA

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
12 No. 03-3351

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—8-31-05