Opinion ID: 3167560
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Alleged Beating — The Cause of Saed’s Injury

Text: The Board’s order also referred to a letter submitted in the Maroufs’ application in which Saed’s mother referred to his nose as having been broken “in an accident,” as opposed to in a beating. A.R. 4. The IJ saw the letter, a translation of a note handwritten in Arabic, as a crucial inconsistency that “completely torpedoes everything” in the Maroufs’ case. A.R. 82, 476-78. The IJ treated a single translated note as dispositive of the truth, despite the fact the Maroufs had consistently claimed through their application and testimony that Saed’s nose had been broken in a beating by mob of Muslim extremists, holding: “to the extent that the respondent ever had any nose problem, we know from [Saed’s mother’s] letter it was not because of being beaten by Muslim extremists, it was because of some accident.” A.R. 82. But the IJ failed to keep in mind the language barrier and use of translation; at no time during the Maroufs’ lengthy testimony did the IJ make any effort to determine if the letter was mistranslated, or otherwise give the Maroufs an opportunity to explain it. Indeed, the IJ’s first reference to it appears to have been in his order denying relief. Id. Moreover, the mother’s use of the word “accident,” as translated from Arabic to English, is not necessarily inconsistent with a broken nose due to an attack or fight. Instead, it tends to corroborate that the nose was broken, as the Maroufs testified, but simply does not attempt to state precisely how or why. Thus, the Arabic letter is not necessarily inconsistent with how the broken nose occurred. “Accident” does not necessarily negate a blow to the nose by another person. No. 14-4136 Marouf, et al. v. Lynch Page 11 The IJ performed a catch-all inquiry with the Maroufs at the outset of their testimony to get them to certify that all the evidence they had submitted in their asylum application was accurately translated. A.R. 59-60. While this procedure was prudent, it was not sufficiently “sensitive to misunderstandings caused by language barriers [and] the use of translators”, ReyesCardona, 565 F. App’x at 367, because it neither 1) gave the Maroufs a particular opportunity to address evidence that factored heavily in the IJ’s ultimate adverse finding, nor 2) respected the fact that, since the Maroufs were not fluent English speakers, they would be unlikely to identify a mistranslation because the same error that was made in translating the note in the first place would likely have been repeated when the translated copy was translated back to them in Arabic. Overall, the IJ failed to be sufficiently “sensitive to misunderstandings caused by language barriers, the use of translators, and cultural differences” and improperly relied on an alleged inconsistency despite a “strong indication it result[ed] from translation errors or language-based misunderstanding” because it was “belied by an extensive record of otherwise consistent statements and corroborating evidence.” Id.; Ilunga, 777 F.3d at 207-08. And the IJ improperly “cherry pick[ed]” an “inconsistenc[y] to support an adverse credibility finding that is unsupported by the record as a whole” without giving the petitioners a chance to explain that inconsistency in order “to verify that an inconsistency actually exist[ed].” Ilunga, 777 F.3d at 207. In these circumstances, the translation of Saed’s mother’s letter does not rise to the level of substantial evidence that can support an adverse credibility determination.