Opinion ID: 867971
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Agency’s Factual Findings

Text: Rosario-Mijangos challenges the IJ’s decision to credit the agents’ testimony regarding their usual practices and the IJ’s finding that those practices were followed throughout the agents’ encounters with Rosario-Mijangos. Because the BIA adopted the factual findings of the IJ, we review the latter directly. See Lin Zhong v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 480 F.3d 104, 116 (2d Cir. 2007). We apply a “substantial evidence” standard and uphold the IJ’s factual findings if they are “supported by reasonable, substantial and probative evidence in the record.” Yan Chen v. Gonzales, 417 F.3d 268, 271 (2d Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted). The IJ’s factual findings here are supported by sufficient evidence to satisfy that standard. The IJ concluded that Rosario-Mijangos knowingly and voluntarily signed two I-826 forms, thereby intelligently admitting his unauthorized presence in the United States, waiving his right to appear before an immigration judge, and electing to return to Mexico. This account of the events of August 30 and September 4, 2007 is consistent with and supported by Garza’s and Reyes’s testimony, and by the documentary evidence. Neither Garza nor Reyes specifically recalled their interactions with Rosario-Mijangos, but they testified in detail as to their usual practices, which in both cases involved reading the I-826 forms to detainees or allowing them an opportunity to read the forms themselves before selecting an option. The IJ found this testimony “credibl[e] and persuasive[].” Rosario-Mijangos contests this finding, but witness credibility is an issue for the agency, see Lin Zhong, 480 F.3d at 116, and its determination will not be 15 disturbed by this Court solely because of inessential discrepancies in the agents’ “generally consistent [and] rational” testimony, Diallo v. INS., 232 F.3d 279, 288 (2d Cir. 2000). Moreover, the IJ reasonably concluded that the documentary evidence supported the agents’ testimony. The markings on both I-826 forms indicated that RosarioMijangos had read their contents, or had them read to him, and both bore his signature and his initials. Rosario-Mijangos also objects to the IJ’s factual findings on the basis that they are inconsistent with his own testimony, and in particular his averments that he was not informed that he could see an immigration judge and was not given an opportunity to read the I-826 forms before signing them. The IJ explicitly considered Rosario-Mijangos’s version of events and chose not to credit it to the extent it conflicted with the agents’ testimony. He explained, in part, that Rosario-Mijangos’s claim that he had been deprived of an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge was “discredited by his own testimony that he never asked for a hearing and was never specifically told that he could not have a hearing.” Because it was reasonable for the IJ to accept the agents’ testimony, he was not required to believe Rosario-Mijangos’s conflicting account. Nor was he required, as Rosario-Mijangos suggests, to explicitly discredit each portion of the testimony that he did not believe. See Xiao Ji Chen v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 471 F.3d 315, 341 (2d Cir. 2006) (“[An IJ] need not enumerate and evaluate on the record each piece of evidence, item by item . . . .”); cf. Diallo, 232 F.3d at 288 (“[W]e cannot agree 16 with the petitioner that the BIA implicitly found his testimony credible or that its failure to make a negative assessment amounts to a finding of credibility.”). Accordingly, we find that the IJ’s factual findings are supported by substantial evidence, and we accept those findings for the purpose of evaluating Rosario-Mijangos’s legal arguments.