Opinion ID: 3065301
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of corroboration.

Text: Hassan Aden argues alternatively that even if corroboration was properly required (as we hold), the corroboration he provided sufficed. The BIA, as Hassan Aden correctly argues, merely assumes that there may be scholarly sources that mention the Wardey clan and the Bilisyar subclan if they exist. This argument is a little slippery. If there were such scholarly 13 Consider jury instructions for civil cases: § 104.25 Failure to Call Available Witness If a party fails to call a person as a witness who has knowledge about the facts in issue, and who is reasonably available to the party, and who is not equally available to the other party, then you may infer that the testimony of that person is unfavorable to the party who could have called the witness and did not. § 104.26 Failure to Produce Available Evidence If a party fails to produce evidence that is under that party’s control and reasonably available to that party and not reasonably available to the adverse party, then you may infer that the evidence is unfavorable to the party who could have produced it and did not. O’Malley, Grenig, Lee, Federal Jury Practice and Instruction, Civil, Vol. 3, at 149-50 (5th ed. 2000). It is hard to imagine a civil trial in which the party bearing the burden of proof asked the trier of fact to take his uncorroborated word for a proposition reasonably subject to corroboration. 14 See Balachandran v. Holder, 566 F.3d 269, 273 (1st Cir. 2009); Sandie v. Attorney Gen., 562 F.3d 246, 252 (3d Cir. 2009); Lin v. Holder, 565 F.3d 971, 976-77 (6th Cir. 2009); Krishnapillai v. Holder, 563 F.3d 606, 618 (7th Cir. 2009); cf. Liu v. Holder, 575 F.3d 193, 197 (2d Cir. 2009) (noting the statutory change but not construing it because the case reviewed an asylum application that predated the effective date of the statutory change). 16642 HASSAN ADEN v. HOLDER materials, then they would corroborate Hassan Aden, but if there are not, then it would be impossible to prove that the clan and subclan exist. The BIA’s statement invites the objection that the half day hearings by impecunious petitioners typical of asylum cases should not be burdened with expensive expert witnesses testifying about their searches of the academic literature and their opinions about it. Fortunately the BIA did not require such academic or expert testimony or documentation. It merely suggested it as a possibility, along with “witnesses.” Hassan Aden argues that he did provide witnesses, the three “affidavits.” The three letters (they are unsworn) were given “little weight” by the BIA because the writers did not know Hassan Aden and were “inconsistent.” The BIA’s explanation is vulnerable to criticism. After all, someone from the Lower Juba region may know very well that the clan and subclan exist, which was the point, without having any acquaintance with Hassan Aden or his family. But one of the letters does indeed say that “Abdirisaq Hussein Adan” is a member of the “Wardaa” clan, something the writer could not know without some foundation in knowledge of petitioner, a knowledge neither claimed nor consistent with misspelling two of petitioner’s three names. [6] Considering that the country report, and not only petitioner’s testimony, establishes that Somalia is a violently disorderly place with no established state, inability to obtain documentation from Somalia might be quite credible, had Hassan Aden testified (he did not) that he wrote or emailed his family but the system of communication did not work and he had no idea whether his communications or theirs got through. A reasonable finder of fact might deem sufficient for corroboration the two identical letters saying that the writers had resided in the Lower Juba region, and the Wardey-Ali clan and Bilisyar subclan were minorities who lived there. Our standard of review, though, does not enable us to substitute our judgment about the persuasiveness of this corroboraHASSAN ADEN v. HOLDER 16643 tion for the BIA’s. We are required to accept administrative findings of fact “unless any reasonable administrator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.”15 This standard also applies to the IJ’s determinations “with respect to the availability of corroborating evidence.”16 Even if we might conclude to the contrary regarding sufficiency of corroboration, we cannot say that “any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.”17 The highly deferential standard of review compels us to let stand the BIA’s determination that Hassan Aden’s corroboration was insufficient. Thought the three letters support the conclusion that Hassan Aden’s claimed clan and subclan exist, the law is that “[t]o reverse the BIA finding we must find that the evidence not only supports that conclusion, but compels it.”18 The question is close, but in light of the other evidence in the record casting doubt on Hassan Aden’s story, we cannot say that the letters “compel” that conclusion.