Opinion ID: 621291
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Finding of a Lack of Corroborating Evidence

Text: “‘[W]here it is reasonable to expect corroborating evidence for certain alleged facts pertaining to the specifics of an applicant’s claim, such evidence should be provided[.]’” Lin v. Holder, 565 F.3d 971, 977 (6th Cir. 2009) (quoted authorities omitted). A failure to submit such reasonably available evidence can support the agency’s determination that the applicant did not meet her burden of proof. Id. An No. 10-4263 Abdurakhmanov v. Holder Page 8 applicant is only required to supply those types of documents that can be “reasonably expected” given his or her circumstances—i.e., only of “the type that would normally be created or available in the particular country and is accessible to the alien, such as through friends, relatives, or co-workers.” Dorosh v. Ashcroft, 398 F.3d 379, 382–83 (6th Cir. 2004) (quoted case omitted). “An immigration judge’s determination regarding the availability of corroborating evidence will not be reversed ‘unless the court finds . . . that a reasonable trier of fact is compelled to conclude that such corroborating evidence is unavailable.” Lin, 565 F.3d at 977. The corroborating evidence standard is typically invoked by IJs when the applicant has submitted little or no evidence to corroborate her testimony. In this case, however, Abdurakhmanov submitted several items of corroborating evidence which the IJ found either to contradict his testimony, to affect his credibility adversely, or to be of little or no weight because the documents were not originals submitted contemporaneously with his asylum application. First, the IJ found that Yelena’s death certificate contradicted Abdurakhmanov’s testimony about the manner of his wife’s death. We have already explained that the IJ misstated Abdurakhmanov’s hearing testimony. Consequently, this finding is not supported by substantial evidence. Second, the IJ and the BIA erred in construing the law applicable to corroborative evidence. The IJ ruled that, “[b]ecause the respondent does not claim to have received any of these documents contemporaneously with the events in question, the authenticity of the documents is suspect, and the DHS could not conduct a forensic analysis without possession of the originals,” relying on Ramaj v. Gonzales, 466 F.3d 520 (6th Cir. 2006). The BIA held that “the Immigration Judge was properly concerned about the lack of contemporaneous documents and originals,” relying on Ramaj and also Matter of H-L-H-, 25 I & N Dec. 209 (BIA 2010). Neither Ramaj nor Matter of H-L-H- support this holding. In Ramaj, we reviewed an IJ’s decision that various documents submitted by the petitioner should be excluded from the record because there was no verification that the No. 10-4263 Abdurakhmanov v. Holder Page 9 signatures on the documents were actually those of the persons alleged to have signed them. 466 F.3d at 529. After reviewing the agency’s regulations on authentication, we noted that “[t]he IJ may have erred in excluding the . . . documents on this ground[]” because the agency’s regulation required attestation by an authorized official only where the document is a copy, and it was unclear whether the documents in that case were copies or originals. Id. at 530. This Court also noted, without deciding, that further certification of an attested copy seemed to be “an option and not a requirement.” Id. Nowhere in the opinion did we address the relative weight to be given originals or photocopies of documentary evidence, nor did we address whether the documents were created contemporaneously with the events in question. In Matter of H-L-H-, the BIA held that documents the applicant obtained from various governmental bodies in her village in China were “entitled to minimal weight” because they “were obtained for the purpose of the hearing, are unsigned and unauthenticated and fail to even identify the authors.” Id. at 214. These documents were “not a record of a past event, such as a contemporaneously created police report,” but were “instead a statement from local government officials of what allegedly will happen to the respondent and her husband in the future if they return.” Id. The BIA qualified its holding by noting that “asylum applicants cannot always reasonably be expected to have authenticated documents from an alleged persecutor[.]” Id. at 215, n.5 (citation omitted). Abdurakhmanov’s corroborating evidence was “obtained for the purpose of the hearing,” but unlike the evidence in Matter of H-L-H-, Abdurakhmanov’s documents were records of past events. They did not purport to speculate about his future treatment upon his return to Uzbekistan. For example, his health certificate was made shortly after his beating; it was not recreated by the doctor years later in anticipation of the asylum hearing. Comparably, his wife’s death certificate was issued following her death in 2000, not years later for the purpose of an immigration hearing. Abdurakhmanov’s documents are copies of original documents, recording past events, which were obtained by his relatives prior to his hearing because he had not brought copies with him when No. 10-4263 Abdurakhmanov v. Holder Page 10 he fled Uzbekistan. His corroborative evidence is thus distinguishable from that presented in Matter of H-L-H-. Therefore, Matter of H-L-H- cannot support the agency’s disregard of Abdurakhmanov’s corroborating evidence on the grounds that the documents were not made contemporaneously with the events they purported to document. The agency’s decision regarding Abdurakhmanov’s corroborating evidence is thus contrary to the law of this Circuit and the agency’s own binding precedents and cannot be used to support the decision of the IJ or BIA.