Opinion ID: 202946
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Denial of Claims for Relief

Text: Zeru arrived in the United States on December 20, 1994. Her non-immigrant business visa allowed her to remain in the United States until July 20, 1995. In October 1995, she filed for asylum and for withholding of removal and was interviewed by an asylum officer. Zeru's case was transferred to the Immigration Court. In February 1998, both Zeru and Ghebrai, who had overstayed his visa as well, received Notices to Appear charging them with removability. Zeru and Ghebrai conceded removability, but both sought asylum, withholding of removal, voluntary departure, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) based on Zeru's assertions of political persecution. An IJ heard testimony from Zeru and Ghebrai on five occasions between January 20, 1999, and March 21, 2002.1 In those initial hearings before the original IJ, Zeru testified to the following facts. She was born in 1968 in Massawa, then a part of Ethiopia. From the age of fifteen, Zeru began pamphleteering and engaging in fundraising activities on behalf of the Eritrean Liberation Front-Revolutionary Council (ELF-RC), a political group devoted to Eritrean independence and the establishment of a multi- 1 The IJ continued the first hearing, in which he heard testimony from Zeru, due to concerns about the quality of the interpreter. Zeru began her testimony anew, with a different interpreter, at the next hearing on August 27, 1999. -3- party democratic system of government. Zeru kept her political activities secret from her family, fearing retribution from various political opponents. One rival separatist group in particular, the Eritrean Peoples' Liberation Front (EPLF), opposed the ELF-RC's agenda in favor of single-party rule. Zeru testified that she was arrested in 1987 by Ethiopian soldiers acting on a tip from the EPLF, and endured a six-month period of imprisonment ending on January 27, 1988. She testified that she was raped, and that she was beaten numerous times by her jailors. Following her release, Zeru spent six months in outpatient treatment for depression in Ethiopia. Within a year of her release from imprisonment, Zeru resumed fundraising for the ELF-RC. By that time, she had met Ghebrai, a physician who worked in a state-run hospital. Zeru testified that she did not tell Ghebrai about her political activities or her prior imprisonment. Zeru and Ghebrai testified that they were married in January 1990. The EPLF defeated the Ethiopian military in 1991 and took power in Eritrea. Zeru testified that Eritrean security forces (according to Zeru, effectively the same organization as the former EPLF) began harassing her in 1993, following a failed coup attempt. On two occasions, security officers detained Zeru and interrogated her in security forces offices near her import business in Asmara. Then, in September 1994, Eritrean officers detained Zeru for a ten- -4- hour interrogation. According to testimony that Zeru gave in August 1999, one of her interrogators held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Zeru testified that she had never felt worse than during that encounter. After the September 1994 incident, Zeru sought the advice of a friend who worked as a secretary with the Eritrean security forces. In November, the friend warned her that her name had appeared on a list of ELF-RC members, and that she was in grave danger. Leaving the country, her friend said, was her only option. At that point, Zeru told Ghebrai about her political activities and her history of harassment by government officials. Zeru testified that she obtained a visa and passport through her secretary friend and left Eritrea. This was more than six years after her 1987-88 imprisonment. Zeru arrived in Boston in December 1994 and resided with a cousin in Portland, Maine. She was eight months pregnant with her second child at the time. Zeru testified that she did not contact her family after leaving Eritrea, and that she had not been in communication with them until recently. Nor did Zeru have any contact with Ghebrai, but communicated with him in occasional messages conveyed through a relative. Ghebrai entered the United States in March of 1996, on a short-term visa to study medicine in Los Angeles, but initially had no contact with Zeru. Ghebrai did not join Zeru in Maine until completing six months of medical training. -5- A new IJ was assigned to petitioners' case in 2003. He reviewed the record, including petitioners' previous testimony, and held a full day of hearings on November 26, 2003. Zeru and Ghebrai reiterated their prior testimony. Zeru stated during direct evidence that she had been raped once, at the start of her imprisonment in 1987. Later, following cross examination and in response to questioning by the IJ, Zeru said there were two instances of rape, the second just before her release. Petitioners also presented an affidavit and testimony from a fact witness named Efrem Weldemichael. Weldemichael, a native of Eritrea and a United States citizen, testified that he was an ELF-RC executive committee member in the United States. Weldemichael testified that he knew Zeru as an ELF-RC member when they were both in Ethiopia during the mid-1980s; he also testified that he heard reports from other ELF-RC members in 1987 or 1988 that Zeru was imprisoned by the Ethiopian government. The IJ also heard from Dr. Melissa Wattenberg, a clinical psychologist specializing in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), whom petitioners presented as an expert witness. Wattenberg was not a treating psychologist and did not provide therapeutic services to Zeru. Rather, at the request of Zeru's counsel, she interviewed Zeru about her experiences during two meetings in October and November of 1998, almost four years after Zeru entered the country, and produced a detailed Assessment Report dated -6- December 1999. That report summarized Zeru's oral statement of her own history and concluded that Ms. Zeru meets criterion for current moderate PTSD, and moderate depression. The report also opined that Zeru is a sincere and reliable reporter of her own experience. Zeru told Wattenberg that she had been raped three times, which differed from her hearing testimony. Zeru's attorney sought to use Wattenberg's testimony to establish the contents of her report and to assess Zeru's credibility. The IJ admitted the report into evidence and indicated that he need not hear testimony duplicative of the report's contents. Zeru's counsel stated that she had no other questions for Wattenberg, and rested on the contents of the report. The IJ also reviewed petitioners' documentary evidence during the November 26, 2003, hearing. The hearing opened with the IJ pointing out that Ghebrai failed to bring his original passport, including the relevant visa page, to the hearing. Petitioners presented the IJ with a letter they had written to the hospital in Eritrea where Zeru had allegedly received treatment following her 1987-88 incarceration, but they were unable to produce the hospital records requested in the letter. Zeru also produced an ELF-RC identification card issued at Zeru's request from the organization's office in Bonn, Germany, in 1998. Zeru testified that she did not carry such a card in Eritrea, but that she -7- obtained it because she was asked to produce this to prove my membership. Zeru also entered into evidence an official letter signifying her release from the prison where she was held in Ethiopia. Zeru testified that she possessed the letter since 1995. Zeru's attorney explained that the document could not be verified by the United States Embassy in Addis Ababa because petitioners had sent a copy instead of the original document to the embassy. Finally, petitioners submitted their marriage certificate. They sent the certificate for verification to the United States Embassy in Asmara, but the embassy responded that Zeru's date of birth as listed on the certificate conflicted with the date recorded in Asmara municipal records. In addition, certain information on the certificate, including the bride's date of birth and the date of the marriage contract, had been covered with white-out and typed over. The IJ admitted all of the documents into evidence, noting that he would give them what weight I deem is appropriate. On December 29, 2003, the IJ denied the asylum application and ordered petitioners' removal. The IJ based his decision on adverse credibility findings for Zeru and Ghebrai, a lack of corroborating evidence requested by IJs during the proceedings, and the submission of apparently fraudulent documents. We describe some, but not all, of the IJ's findings. The IJ gave -8- a number of reasons for his credibility determinations. Among them, he pointed out that Zeru claimed on different occasions to have been raped once, twice, or three times. The IJ noted that even if he was willing to ignore the contradiction in Zeru's testimony between whether she was raped once or twice during her six-month detention, he was still concerned that Zeru had told Wattenberg that she was raped three times. It was the inconsistency between her testimony to the IJ and her report to Wattenberg that the IJ found material and relevant. The IJ stated that it would not be unusual for a victim of trauma to confuse dates or sequences of events, but it would be very unusual . . . to simply forget that an event occurred. The IJ recited numerous other inconsistencies in petitioners' testimony relating to their backgrounds, their marriage, their experiences in Eritrea, and their work histories. The IJ noted that Zeru had been asked to produce specific documents to corroborate her claim and failed to do so. For example, the IJ noted that she had testified that her uncle was arrested in 1993 for involvement in a coup attempt and that the arrest was very well publicized. She was directed at a hearing on August 27, 1999, to obtain news reports or other information to substantiate the arrest. Yet at the hearing on November 26, 2003, she neither produced the documents nor had an explanation for her failure to do so. -9- In addition, the documents petitioners did submit contained inconsistencies and evident alterations detracting from petitioners' claims. The IJ recounted the bases for his findings that the prison release letter,2 the marriage certificate3 and other documentary evidence offered by petitioners were fraudulent. The IJ further observed that petitioners' demeanor during the November 26, 2003, hearing belied their believability. The IJ not only found Ghebrai to be wholly incredible, but also that he had given fraudulent testimony under oath. Indeed, the IJ found that he doubted the testimony of both petitioners even as to their identities and whether they were husband and wife. The IJ also made an adverse credibility finding as to Weldemichael. The IJ pointed out that in his affidavit, Weldemichael stated that he first met Zeru in Ethiopia in 1983 and saw her a couple of time[s] in that context. At the hearing, however, Weldemichael insisted that he first met Zeru in 1986, and only met her once in Ethiopia. The IJ also found it incredible 2 For example, the IJ found it telling that though Zeru said she had the letter in her possession since as early as 1995, she did not present it to the asylum officer at her interview. He found the document most likely had been recently fabricated to support her testimony. 3 The IJ suspected that the certificate was fraudulent because of the unexplained presence of white-out on the document, the discrepancy regarding Zeru's purported date of birth between the certificate and Asmara municipal records, and the fact that the United States Embassy could not determine whether the certificate was genuine. The IJ also pointed out that petitioners could provide no other documentary evidence of their marriage. -10- that although Weldemichael purported to be an ELF-RC leader in Ethiopia, and although he had heard reports of Zeru's imprisonment due to her ELF-RC affiliation, Weldemichael never took enough interest in Zeru's plight to investigate Zeru's condition in prison or whether she was released before the two met again in the United States in 1994. The IJ also observed Weldemichael's demeanor and stated that he simply cannot find that Mr. W[e]ldemichael was credible. Because petitioners' testimony was not credible, and because their corroborating evidence was not only insufficient to support their claims, but in fact contradicted them, the IJ found that Zeru and Ghebrai had failed to establish either past persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution following their return to Eritrea. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(a)-(b) (asylum applicants bear burden of proof to establish refugee status); see also Singh v. Gonzales, 413 F.3d 156, 159 (1st Cir. 2005) (citing Diab v. Ashcroft, 397 F.3d 35, 39 (1st Cir. 2005)) (stating that corroborating evidence may bolster the testimony of a less than entirely credible alien). In concluding that petitioners had not established past persecution, the IJ found that petitioners had shown neither that they suffered any harm nor that they had established a nexus to one of the five statutory grounds for establishing refugee status. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i); 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1). The IJ also separately rejected the claims that -11- petitioners would suffer persecution on their return or had a wellfounded fear of future persecution. See 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(2). The IJ noted that petitioners' close relatives continued to live peacefully in Eritrea. Indeed, Zeru's brother was in the military, and her family continued to live in the same home and run the family business, unmolested by the Eritrean government. The IJ also denied petitioners' applications for withholding of removal, protection under the CAT, and voluntary departure.4 Zeru and Ghebrai retained a new attorney, Solomon Bekele, for their appeal to the BIA. On appeal, petitioners insisted they had established past persecution. They claimed that the IJ erred in his credibility finding because he improperly demanded authenticated documentary evidence to prove petitioners' claims. They also objected to the IJ's use of demeanor in finding Zeru and Ghebrai incredible. Petitioners described inconsistencies regarding the number of Zeru's rapes as minor and explained them as lapses in memory due to the passage of time. Petitioners also claimed that the second IJ did not observe proper procedures applicable upon assigning a new judge to an immigration case. Petitioners additionally argued that because Zeru had established past 4 Petitioners' brief does not advance any arguments regarding their claims for withholding of removal, protection under the CAT, or voluntary departure. Those claims accordingly have been waived for purposes of this petition. See Dine v. Gonzales, 464 F.3d 89, 93 (1st Cir. 2006). -12- persecution, petitioners were entitled to a finding of well-founded fear of future persecution and a grant of their withholding of removal claim. Finally, petitioners made a perfunctory argument that they qualified for protection under the CAT. On February 7, 2006, the BIA affirmed, incorporating an earlier August 3, 2005 per curiam order. The BIA upheld both the lack of credibility finding and the finding that the inconsistencies were not sufficiently explained. The BIA noted that it did not find persuasive Zeru's argument that the inconsistencies were caused by lapses of memory. Further, that argument did not explain inconsistencies in Ghebrai's and Weldemichael's testimony. The BIA also noted that the IJ allowably considered the demeanor of the witnesses. The BIA also found a lack of corroborating evidence. The BIA noted that Zeru's immediate family members continued to reside in Eritrea without harm. As to the argument that this was explained by the fact that her family members were politically inactive, the BIA noted that was inconsistent with her husband's testimony that he was not politically active, but nonetheless he had been threatened repeatedly by security agents. In turn, it was implausible that the husband, had he been threatened by government agents, would have been granted a passport and permitted to travel to the United States. -13- The BIA also addressed petitioners' argument regarding the assignment of a new IJ to their case. The BIA's decision made clear that the IJ complied with the requirement that he familiarize himself with the record and so state on the record. In fact, the IJ's opinion made repeated reference to details of petitioners' testimony given in hearings presided over by the previous IJ.