Opinion ID: 45299
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reliability of Documents

Text: Petitioners argue that the testimony of the government’s document expert, Donna Eisenberg, was not sufficient for the IJ to find that some documents that they submitted in support of their claim were unreliable. In Pasha v. Gonzales, the Seventh Circuit held that an IJ should not have accepted the testimony of a document expert who examined an Albanian document when the expert did not 14 speak Albanian, did not have access to comparable documents, and was “confessedly ignorant” of the Albanian government’s resources. 433 F.3d 530, 532, 535 (7th Cir. 2005). The Seventh Circuit held that the “spirit” of the rule concerning the admission of scientific evidence announced in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786 (1993), applied to immigration proceedings. Pasha, 433 F.3d at 535. No other circuit has considered Daubert’s effect on immigration cases. We need not decide whether to adopt the rationale in Pasha because Urrea stipulated that Eisenberg was qualified to testify as an expert. Moreover, though Eisenberg admitted that she did not have documents from Urrea’s specific battalion, she was familiar with documents from the Colombian military and had exemplars from the military to which to compare Urrea’s documents. Further, Eisenberg did not base her conclusion on aspects of the Spanish language, but instead on the manner in which the documents were produced. She testified that letterheads were typically preprinted using an offset lithographic process, but Urrea’s documents had photocopied or typewritten letterheads. For example, in one case, the letterhead appeared to have been reproduced several times. In addition, she opined that the seal and signature on the military letter had been copied as well, and that it was illogical that such security features would be 15 photocopied. Thus, substantial evidence supports the IJ’s conclusion that Urrea’s corroborating documents were unreliable, and Urrea has put forth no evidence that compels reversal.