Court Opinion

ID: 9497921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:03:51.059175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:30.557867
License: Public Domain

McKEE, Circuit Judge
concurring.
I fully join my colleagues’ opinion. However, I write separately to express my concern with the Immigration Judge’s reasoning in this matter. I am particularly troubled because the Immigration Judge ignored evidence corroborating Zhang’s claim while apparently going out of his way to find problems with it. Consequently, as I shall explain, the IJ’s opinion reads like “a progression of flawed sound bites that gives the impression that [the IJ] was looking for ways” to deny Zhang’s claim, rather than adjudicate it. Dia v. Ashcroft, 353 F.3d 228, 250 (3d Cir.2003).
The IJ states that Zhang’s testimony:
right at the beginning, appears to be a script. This is subtle but it’s an indication of what was to follow. I’m referring to when the respondent, in her oral testimony, stated right at the outset, T *158have suffered persecution from the family planning.’ ... real refugees are not throwing around the word ‘persecution’ that often ... In the cases where the persecution is lacking because the story is not true the word ‘persecution’ tends to be used more and more.
App. 13. The IJ’s reaction to this testimony, by his own account, seems to have predisposed him “right at the beginning” to conclude that Zhang was not being truthful. Given the evidence supporting her claim, absent some explanation, that reaction is simply unsupportable.
Zhang used the word “persecution” exactly once during her entire testimony. She did not “throw[ ] around the word ... that often ... ”. The single instance in which she referred to “persecution” is as follows:
Question: Why did you leave China?
Answer: Because I have suffered persecution by the family planning.
Question: Can you describe what family planning is?
Answer: They just forced me to undergo abortion and have the IUD inserted, but I do not go willingly.
App. 62, lines 12-17. Based upon that one reference to “persecution,” the IJ concluded “right from the beginning” that Zhang was being untruthful. He thereafter viewed her claim through jaundiced eyes despite substantial documentary evidence that corroborated it.
Zhang’s reference to “persecution” is hardly remarkable even if that word is not part of her daily vocabulary. Zhang may well have become familiar with that word and learned its relevance to her claim during the course of the hearings into the issue of “persecution.” Zhang was, after all, represented by an attorney who would have discussed her case with her before the hearing.9 She could easily have realized that the treatment she was describing was tantamount to “persecution” under our immigration laws. However, for reasons that are not apparent on this record, the IJ never allowed for that possibility.
Although we don’t expect an Immigration Judge to search for ways to sustain an alien’s testimony, neither do we expect the judge to search for ways to undermine and belittle it. If the IJ’s reference to Zhang’s single use of “persecution” were the only troubling aspect of his opinion, it could be dismissed as hyperbole. However, the rest of the IJ’s opinion is also troubling.
The IJ believed it was implausible that a woman as “relatively humble and who [has as] little education” as Zhang would be familiar with the Chinese government’s mistreatment of those Chinese citizens that return to China after leaving for the United States. App. 13-14. However, the IJ never bothered to explain why he discounted the very real possibility that someone in Zhang’s position could learn her government’s policies through “word of mouth.” Indeed, given the absence of a free press so typical of authoritarian regimes, information about official mistreatment of citizens would more likely spread by word of mouth than written word. Yet, the IJ concluded, without citing any supporting evidence, that Zhang “came about this ‘knowledge’ because someone, probably the smuggler or someone who arranged for her to come forward with this asylum, told her to throw that one in.” See app. 13-14. That is nothing short of rank speculation.
*159The IJ assumed that Zhang manufactured a “dramatis personae” [sic] in testifying about the doctor who removed IUDs because he was purportedly able to remove them and avoid prosecution by the authorities. The IJ was skeptical that residents in her community knew the doctor’s identity, yet the identity remained hidden to the authorities. The IJ reasoned:
According to the respondent “a lot of people knew about” this doctor who was taking IUD’s out in the particular area of China. Apparently, no one in the planning office knew about this doctor. Everybody else knew about him but the people who count, the officials, didn’t seem to know that as they were putting IUD’s into women he was down the street taking them all out. One could just imagine what kind of punishment a person like that would suffer if the rest of these allegations about the severity of the birth control policies in China are to be believed.
App. 15.
Once again, given the evidence corroborating Zhang’s claim, his skepticism of that testimony is as unfounded as it is naivé. The IJ’s reasoning proceeds as follows: Zhang said she and others knew of a doctor who was illegally removing IUDs. The doctor had not been arrested even though villagers knew what he was doing. Therefore, the doctor must not exist and Zhang must have manufactured him for her testimony.
Of course, the IJ had no way of knowing whether the doctor was eventually prosecuted. Moreover, it is not that improbable that a doctor could perform illegal procedures and not be arrested. Even in a society as advanced as our own, not every “law breaker” is arrested. One need only recall that a few years ago, women in the United States were able to find doctors willing to perform abortions even though the practice was then illegal.
Today we need look no further than many American cities where open air drug markets prosper even though residents, and even police, know drugs are being sold there. For example, in United States v. Miller, 73 F.Supp.2d 4, 6 (D.C.Cir.1999), the court refers to the Drug Enforcement Agency refusing to renew a lease on a property because- of nearby open air drug markets. The court explained: “This property ... is an older building ... At one point the Drug Enforcement Administration was the ■ tenant. Ironically, the DEA did not renew the lease because of narcotic activity in open air drug markets in the area.” Cf. United States v. Edmonds, 240 F.3d 55, 57 (D.C.Cir.2001) (“The officers included ... a 21-year veteran who had worked in that neighborhood intermittently for some 14 years. [It] is notorious as one of the many ‘open air drug markets’ infesting the nation’s capital ...”); United States v. Baptiste, 264 F.3d 578, 581 (5th Cir.2001) (“The government presented evidence at trial that an ‘open air drug market’ existed in the Seventh Ward beginning in the early 1990s.”); United States v. Gibbs, 904 F.2d 52, 60 (D.C.Cir.1990) (counsel objected when the witness testified the defendant was “up around J. street, the open air drug market”). According to the logic that was used to deny Zhang’s claim, these open air drug markets simply do not exist because officials would know about them.
There is, however, an even more troubling aspect of the Immigration Judge’s decision. Given the judge’s analysis, I can not help but wonder if his decision here was influenced by his view of Zhang’s parenting. The Judge stated:
So she has three children. This is like a bird in the hand versus two in the bush. To [Zhang] two in the bush is more *160important than the one in the hand. She has three children which she can take care of, which she can cherish and be part of their upbringing, or she could say, “No. I’m not really interested in that. What I think I’ll do is I’ll just discard those three kids and I’ll worry about some other kids who may in the future materialize somehow or other. I’m not quite sure how because, by the way, my husband happens to be in China as I sit here and speak. But let’s forget about the kids that I have and we’ll worry about the kids that I don’t have and in all probability never will have.”
App. 18.
In fairness, it is possible that the IJ summarized Zhang’s testimony in this manner to explain why he found her asylum claim inconsistent with her leaving her three children in China, and that this undermined her credibility. However, given the Judge’s willingness to ignore so much of this record that is consistent with Zhang’s testimony, I can not help but be concerned that such a bias played a role in this decision. The issue before the Judge was, after all, whether Zhang qualified as a “refugee,” not the quality of her parenting, or her presence in the home. See Perez-Alvarez v. INS, 857 F.2d 23, 24 (1st Cir.1988) (in considering claims of persecution it is “highly advisable to avoid assumptions regarding the way other societies operate.”).
In overlooking the evidence corroborating Zhang’s testimony, the IJ explained: “[w]hen someone is going to come in and say they had a forcible abortion ... I’m going to want some proof that it’s more than just possible, that there is a substantial chance that this thing ... happened .... ” App. 17. Though he demanded “some proof,” the judge totally ignored proof that Zhang had introduced to corroborate her claim. This included (1) birth certificates for Zhang, her husband, and her three children; (2) a receipt indicating that Zhang was fined 3000 Yuan for removing an IUD without permission; (3) another receipt showing that Zhang was fined 5000 Yuan for “attempt to give birth secretly;” (4) a Birth Control Surgery Cer-tifícate from Changle City stating that Zhang “was conducted with a Abortion Operation and IUD installation on March 15[, 1996] at our Clinic;” and (5) a notice addressed to Zhang and her husband from the “Birth Control Office of Shouzhan Town Changle City,” which instructed Zhang or her husband to go to the local hospital to be sterilized, or, be forced to be sterilized, because Zhang already had children.
The IJ also rejected Zhang’s testimony that her IUD fell out without relying on any medical or scientific evidence. He simply concluded that IUDs cannot fall out without an individual noticing. App. 19. There are, however, sources that indicate that this is a distinct possibility. See: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birth control/pub-Deontraception-iud.xml.10 (“Although uncommon, an IUD can be expelled without your knowing it. This is most likely to happen during your period. It is a good idea to check your pads or tampons daily while you are menstruating to see if the IUD has fallen out.”).
Finally, the IJ explains that he is skeptical about Zhang’s testimony that only farmers are allowed to have a second child because “[t]here is no support for that anywhere in what the State Department tells us.” App. 17. However, there is nothing in the State Department Report *161that undermines that testimony either. Zhang can not be faulted because the State Department Country Report fails to touch upon every aspect of China’s one child policy. Moreover, common sense would suggest that, to the extent that an authoritarian regime is supported by an agrarian economy, officials might well allow farmers more than one child to help with the land, but deny that permission to families that did not need the extra labor to produce food. Frankly, I do not know if this is true or not. I submit, however, that it is consistent with common sense and I mention the possibility only to illustrate that the IJ seems to have gone out of his way to find Zhang’s testimony incredible.
Thus, I think it important to state that if the BIA remands this matter for further proceedings before an Immigration Judge, I hope that the Bureau will see the wisdom of referring it to a different IJ. This IJ’s decision was “not based on a specific, cogent reason, but, instead, [ ] based on speculation, conjecture, or an otherwise unsupported personal opinion.” Dia, 353 F.3d at 250. Accordingly, I do not see how Zhang can receive a hearing that would insure the fairness and the appearance of impartiality so crucial to a just result if the case is ultimately decided by the same IJ. As the Supreme Court observed in Offutt v. U.S., 348 U.S. 11, 14, 75 S.Ct. 11, 99 L.Ed. 11 (1954), to perform its high function in the best way, “justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.” In order to achieve that result here, Zhang must have a hearing before a different Immigration Judge.11

. It would have certainly been less than professional to call his client as a witness without discussing the case with her beforehand.

. Last viewed March 17, 2005.

. The importance of remanding Zhang's case to a different Immigration Judge is further demonstrated by yet another excerpt from the IJ’s oral decision. In an apparent attempt at sarcasm, and despite documentary corroboration that Zhang had undergone a forced abortion, the judge quipped, "[tjhere is evidence [that forced abortions] have occurred but there is also evidence that meteors have landed in the United States." App. 17.
I have no idea what the judge meant by that comment. Meteors have, after all, fallen in the United States, and I don't understand how that fact undermines proof of their existence, nor why it is relevant to Zhang's corroborated claims.