Court Opinion

ID: 9496847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:36:57.884305+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:50.571254
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
We owe substantial deference to the BIA’s credibility determinations. See Gui v. INS, 280 F.3d 1217, 1225 (9th Cir.2002). But substantial deference is not code for rubber stamp. As we have said before: ‘We do not accept blindly ... [the BIA’s] conclusion that a petitioner is not credible. Rather, we examine the record to see whether substantial evidence supports that conclusion, and determine whether the reasoning employed ... is fatally flawed.” Aguilera-Cota v. INS, 914 F.2d 1375, 1381 (9th Cir.1990). The record in this case clearly supports a finding that Farah Taha is credible. Farah Taha’s testimony recounted horrific instances of torture in specific detail, which he then corroborated with medical evidence, including a letter from his physician. The IJ ignored the physician’s assessment that Farah Taha had been the victim of torture and laughed at his testimony. The BIA upheld the IJ’s decision, finding “no error.” A.R. at 2.
Rather than look closely at the whole record, as we are required to do, the majority simply signs off on the BIA’s superficial analysis. In so doing, my colleagues abdicate their responsibility and deprive Farah Taha of his fair chance to gain asylum.
Credibility
1. The BIA offered several grounds supporting its decision that Farah Taha was not a credible witness. First, the BIA noted the “unexplained and unresolved discrepancies between allegations in his testimony and his asylum application.” Id. Though Farah Taha’s testimony offered considerably more detail than his asylum application, there is nothing inconsistent about the two accounts. In the asylum application, Farah Taha explained his affiliation with the Umma Party. He offered details about the history of the party and explained that, after the military coup in 1989, he “followed the party’s tactics and strategies in resisting the regime,” which “created a severe friction with security elements and spies of the regime inside the department.” Id. at 261. In his testimony, Farah Taha elaborated that he distributed flyers and wrote anti-government messages on walls. This led to his detention, during which he was subjected to physical torture. By contrast with most adverse credibility cases, in which inconsistencies generally refer to conflicting state-*631merits, see, e.g., Wang v. INS, 352 F.3d 1250, 1254-55 (9th Cir.2003), nothing about these two accounts is contradictory; one merely offers more detail than the other.
Farah Taha also wrote in his asylum application that he was arrested outside his garage in 1994 and was “questioned about pamphlets that were circulating around the city.” A.R. at 261. He wrote that he “was kept overnight, and the following morning the interrogation continued.” Id. He was finally granted legal counsel and was “released on [his] personal recognizance, but only after [he] was forced to sign an affidavit to report' daily to the headquarters.” Id. at 261-62. He elaborated in his testimony that, during this detention he was forced to walk on glass, and was beaten severely. In both accounts, Farah Taha claimed he was picked up from outside his garage, interrogated and released the next morning. Though he put it more gingerly in his asylum application by explaining that he was “released on [his] personal recognizance” — a legal term signifying that no charges were brought against him — this account is entirely consistent with his testimony that “[a]round 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning they threw me outside while I was still dizzy.” Id. at 153.
We have repeatedly held that the “failure to file an application form that was as complete as might be desired cannot, without more, properly serve as the basis for a finding of a lack of credibility.” Aguilera-Cota, 914 F.2d at 1382; see also Akinmade v. INS, 196 F.3d 951, 956 (9th Cir.1999); Lopez-Reyes v. INS, 79 F.3d 908, 911 (9th Cir.1996) (“It is well settled that an applicant’s testimony is not per se lacking in credibility simply because it includes details that are not set forth in the asylum application.”). This is especially so where, as here, there are “no contradictions between the information set forth in the application and [the] ... testimony,” and there is no indication that petitioner “lie[d] or misrepresented] facts on his asylum application.” Aguilera-Cota, 914 F.2d at 1382.
The reasoning behind this rule is that asylum applications often are not prepared by lawyers but by applicants “who do not speak English and are unable to retain counsel. Under these circumstances, the IJs cannot expect the answers provided in the applications to be as comprehensive or as thorough as they would be if set forth in a legal brief.” Id. We have also recognized the tendency for applications prepared without a lawyer to “focus on different aspects of ... [the alien’s] experiences,” and have held that “[a]ll that can be concluded from the different focus ... is that the ... [non-lawyer] and the lawyer reached different conclusions as to what parts of ... [the] story provided the basis for asylum relief.” Chanchavac v. INS, 207 F.3d 584, 588 n. 2 (9th Cir.2000).
Farah Taha’s asylum- application was prepared not by a lawyer, but by a friend of his. Clearly, the friend had command of the English language, and offered a fair amount of detail concerning the history of the Umma Party and Farah Taha and his family’s involvement in it. However, that the friend was a competent writer and offered some detail does not mean that he had any understanding of our immigration laws or that he knew which facts would be most helpful to Farah Taha’s asylum claim. It is entirely possible that Farah Taha and his friend believed the crucial issues to be the history of the Sudan and Farah Taha’s role in the Umma Party. They may not have understood, as Farah Taha’s lawyer did, that the BIA would be more interested in the particular, instances of torture that Farah Taha experienced, or that the *632asylum application would be the appropriate place to describe that torture.
It is also evident from the record that details of Farah Taha’s torture may have been omitted from his asylum application because of their painful and intimate nature. Farah Taha stated throughout his testimony that he had never previously spoken about these incidents. When first describing being forced to sit on a glass bottle for seven hours, Farah Taha said, “I have never said this to anyone yet.” A.R. at 132. He then explained that he did not seek medical attention immediately after this incident out of shame:
A. After they release you, I mean, you’re embarrassed to go out on the street. You have to clean yourself and all that. You have to go at night because you’re embarrassed to walk out on the street like that.
Q. Did you seek medical attention, sir?
A. I cannot go to a doctor.
Q. So did you get any kind of medical attention for yourself?
A. We have some kind of plant that takes away the wounds, heals the wounds. That’s all because I cannot go to a hospital. I can’t even say this to any- — -in front of anybody.
Id. at 134. The lack of detail in Farah Taha’s asylum application, as compared with his testimony, thus may reflect nothing more than his embarrassment and shame at revealing such personal and painful experiences in a formal application to the immigration authorities, particularly when he had to dictate everything to a friend.
More importantly, Farah Taha’s testimony did not stand on its own. At least some of it was corroborated by documentary evidence in the administrative record. See Aguilera-Cota, 914 F.2d at 1382-83 (“A failure to state each and every ground for a claim of political asylum at the time of the initial application should not prejudice that claim, and particularly not where the petitioner subsequently provides documentation to support his testimony.”). Fa-rah Taha presented a letter from his doctor, the authenticity or accuracy of which the government did not challenge, explaining that Farah Taha’s “p[h]ysical exam revealed multiple scars on arms and legs. His bodily injuries were the result of physical abuse and torture while he was in prison in his country [Sjudan in 1994.” A.R. at 22. He also offered photographs of those scars, id. at 23-26, and showed the actual scars to the IJ during his testimony, id. at 151-52. Neither the BIA nor the IJ addressed this evidence or attempted to reconcile it with the determination that Farah Taha’s story was fabricated.
2. The BIA also “agree[d] with the Immigration Judge that the respondent’s lack of specificity in his testimony, addressed in detail in her decision, was not resolved by the respondent and degraded his credibility.” Id. at 2. The IJ had offered the following explanation for her finding:
The testimony of the respondent was very choppy. He jumped around a lot and he was extremely difficult to follow. He would make a statement and then deny it on the next breath. He would be talking about something and then all of the sudden and for no reason whatsoever started describing some other event in some other point in time. He would often refer to “they” and “them” and when asked questions about his own torture, he would talk in the abstract as to the things that happened to people using those terms instead of describing what happened to him.... So it appears that at all times when the respondent was describing these horrible tortures that he claims to have suffered, he was probably testifying from things that he has heard that happened to other people *633because that’s the way he preferred to describe them. Instead of using the pronoun “I,” or what happened to “me,” he would be saying as what happened to “them” and things that are done to “those people” that endured these things. Always in the abstract.
Id. at 39-40.
Although some of Farah Taha’s answers to preliminary questions may not have been perfectly responsive,1 his testimony concerning his torture at the hands of the Sudanese government was quite specific. Contrary to the IJ and the BIA’s findings, Farah Taha described his experiences in excruciating detail. He spoke in the first person and made it clear that all this had happened to him. For example, when asked about the 1989 incident, Farah Taha testified:
A. They take off your clothes and they have you sit on glass, you know, glass Coke bottles. I have never said this to anyone yet.
Q. So did that happen to you?
A. Um-huh. Yeah.
Q. I can’t visualize, sir, exactly what you mean. You took off your clothes and were forced to sit on- — was it broken glass or bottles or what?
A. They put handcuffs on your hands and put them back and they handcuff your legs. They have you sit on, you know, those small Pepsi bottles, they have you sit on top of that. Like the beer bottles here.
Q. One bottle or more than one bottle, sir?
A. One. That was the first and last time they sat me on that.
Q. And what happened to you as a consequence of doing that?
A. I had surgery in Saudi Arabia in the year '95-'96 exactly.
Q. What kind of surgery?
A. I didn’t have control with the bowel movement, but now I’m fine. I had a surgery.
Q. How long were you forced to sit on the Coke bottle, sir?
A. They pressure you until they start bleeding.
Q. How long were you forced to sit on the bottle, sir?
A. I stayed there from seven hours and — I mean, you’re even embarrassed to go out on the street because your body from the rear is all blood and stuff.
Id. at 132-33.
Farah Taha used equal detail to describe the 1994 incident:
A. I was exposed to walking on glass, broken glass, to go into that room.
Q. Okay. When you say you were exposed to walking on glass, sir, were you — did you have shoes on?
A. No.
Q. And about how far were you forced to walk on glass in this manner?
A. Not — not too much. Approximately two meters, maybe a meter and — and a half.
Id. at 148-49. Farah Taha then explained that, after being forced to walk on glass, he was repeatedly beaten. Again, his testimony was replete with detail and he was clearly recounting events that happened to him, not giving an abstract account of *634things he had heard from others. He testified:
A. ... [T]hey handcuffed my hands. In the beginning my legs were handcuffed only and there was a chain and then after Khaled came, my hands were also handcuffed.
Q. Anything else happen, sir?
A. They — they hit me with the suung2 on my hand and my legs, of course.
Q.... What did they do with the suungs to you?
A. I was hit in the hand. He was pushing my shoulder and then hit my hand, but the one on the leg, it went all the way to the bone.3
Q. Okay, sir. On the wrist, how did you get that scar? What did they do with the suung?
A. He was talking and he said, “Bring him water.” I said, “How am I going to drink it?” So they released my hands. He said, “I’ll give yon water,” and I was trying to drink the water and it had a very foul smell. I mean, it smelled like human urine. So I put it down. He— when I put the glass down, the — the guy behind me, he said, “You’re having fun here? You think you’re having fun? You think you can ask whatever you want to ask? You think you’re sitting on your mother’s lap? One time you want water. One time you want an attorney.” And so he approached to hit me and I put my hand up to stop him and it hit my hand.
Id. at 150-52. It is difficult to see how either the IJ or the BIA could find this testimony lacked specificity. Farah Taha remembered what was said, offered names and even gave approximate distances. Even under the highest standard of deference, the BIA’s determination that Farah Taha’s testimony was not sufficiently specific should not be upheld.4
*635Considering the whole record, the BIA exaggerated the importance of the “discrepancies” between Farah Taha’s testimony and his asylum application, and was simply incorrect in finding Farah Taha’s testimony was not specific. A comparison of Farah Taha’s asylum application and his testimony does not reveal a single contradiction; they are easily reconciled. Everything else in the record — the detailed accounts of torture in Farah Taha’s testimony, the physician’s statement, the conspicuous scars on his body — all point to his story’s veracity. I would thus find that this is one of the rare instances where a different result than the BIA’s is compelled. See INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 483-84, 112 S.Ct. 812, 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992).
Convention Against Torture
The majority also contravenes our holding in Kamalthas v. INS, 251 F.3d 1279 (9th Cir.2001), by finding that the BIA did not err when it declined to independently evaluate Farah Taha’s Convention Against Torture claim. The IJ addressed Farah Taha’s Convention claim in one conclusory sentence: “It is furthermore the order of this court that the respondent’s application for relief under Article 3 of the Torture Convention be and his [sic] hereby denied.” A.R. at 42. The BIA added nothing more. The majority holds that this was a proper resolution of the issue, finding that an adverse credibility determination was sufficient to preclude Farah Taha’s claim under the Convention.
In Kamalthas, however, we held that an adverse credibility finding in petitioner’s asylum claim does not end the Convention Against Torture inquiry. Just as in our case, the BIA found that Kamalthas’s accounts of torture in his native country, Sri Lanka, were not credible based on his demeanor, “the fact that others had told ‘the exact same story,’ ” and the fact that Kamalthas had told the INS airport inspector that he’d had no trouble with the Sri Lankan police. The BIA then applied this adverse credibility finding to reject Kamalthas’s claim under the Convention. Kamalthas, 251 F.3d at 1282-83. We vacated the BIA’s decision, holding that this was not a sufficient basis for rejecting Kamalthas’s Convention claim, because the Convention also requires the BIA to consider “[e]vidence of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights within the country of removal” and “[o]ther relevant information regarding conditions in the country of removal,” and these issues needed to be addressed before a determination could be made. Id. at 1282 (citing 8 C.F.R § 208.16(c)(2)) (emphasis omitted). We elaborated that “ ‘[w]e are not comfortable with allowing a negative credibility determination in the asylum context to wash over the torture claim.’ ... Indeed, proper attention to relevant country conditions might lend credence to Kamalthas’s assertions of torture and cause the BIA to view them in a different light.” Id. at 1284. This is especially applicable in our case, where the adverse credibility determination rests on even shakier ground than in Kamalthas.
The majority claims that our case is distinguishable because, in Kamalthas, there was specific evidence of country conditions in the record, indicating that petitioner’s minority group would be subject to torture in Sri Lanka. The majority finds that, by contrast, there was “no evidence that [Farah Taha] is a member of any ethnic, religious, or social minority suffering torture or other abuses by the Sudanese government.” Maj. op. at 630. But just because Farah Taha is not a member of “any ethnic, religious, or social minority suffering torture,” that does not mean that he may not be subject to torture. As a member of the Umma Party — a political *636minority — and a vocal opponent of the Sudanese government, he may be even more likely to be subject to government abuse. As the Sudan Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1998 noted:
The Government’s human rights record remained extremely poor, and it continued to commit numerous, serious abuses. Citizens do not have the ability to change their government peacefully. Government forces were responsible for extrajudicial killings and disappearances. Government security forces regularly tortured, beat, harassed, arbitrarily arrested, and detained opponents or suspected opponents of the Government with impunity.
A.R. at 201 (emphasis added). The 1999 Country Report also supports this:
... [T]he Government’s official and unofficial security forces continued to torture and beat suspected opponents and others. Security forces tortured youths, student leaders, and others whom they deemed opponents of the Government. The Government reportedly harassed, detained, and tortured lawyers whom they viewed as political opponents.... [T]he U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture described torture as a fairly extensive problem.
Id. at 221-22 (emphasis added). As Ka-malthas noted, these accounts may not only be indicative on their own that Farah Taha faces torture if deported, but also “might lend credence to ... [petitioner’s] assertions of torture and cause the BIA to view them in a different light.” Kamalthas, 251 F.3d at 1284.
Of course, it is not our job to make the initial determination on this issue. As the Supreme Court noted in INS v. Ventura, 537 U.S. 12, 123 S.Ct. 353, 154 L.Ed.2d 272 (2002), where the BIA has not considered an issue, it is not the job of the court of appeals to decide it in the first instance. The Court reasoned: “The agency can bring its expertise to bear upon the matter; it can evaluate the evidence; it can make an initial determination; and, in doing so, it can, through informed discussion and analysis, help a court later determine whether its decision exceeds the leeway that the law provides.” Id. at 355-56. The majority, however, ignores this and decides on its own that Farah Taha does not have a cognizable claim. Rather than make conclusory statements about whether Farah Taha will be subject to torture if deported, I would remand this case to the BIA for a much closer and more careful look.

. For example, when asked by his counsel whether he “ever belong[ed] to any political party or group,’’ Farah Taha responded, "[w]e are a political family. We’re well known in Sudan.” A.R. at 103. When asked the question again, he responded more directly: "Yes, I’m a member of Al-Umma Party.” Id.

. Farah Taha described a suung as a weapon similar to a bayonet. A.R. at 151.

. As noted by counsel during his testimony, Farah Taha then indicated a scar on his left wrist approximately three inches in length and one on his leg above the knee of similar length. A.R. at 151-52.

. It is, moreover, troubling that the BIA would rely entirely on the IJ's determination that Farah Taha's testimony lacked specificity, without offering any of its own examples to support its conclusion. Even the government conceded during oral argument that the IJ conducted a poor hearing. As Farah Taha testified about losing his job as a mechanic’s assistant because of his political beliefs, the IJ burst out into laughter. Though she apologized, her apology was not very convincing. The IJ said: "The testimony of the respondent became so incomprehensible as to raise the emotions of the Court to such a degree that the Court lost her composure and began to laugh uncontrollably because of the silliness of the testimony. ... Maybe something did happen that was serious, but it sure did not come out from the testimony as though it was anything related to reality or anything related to any event that would have caused anybody to have fear.” A.R. at 123-24 (emphasis added).
Later in the hearing, after listening to Fa-rah Taha's full testimony about the various tortures he suffered and before any cross-examination had taken place, the IJ told the government attorney: "I think ... I know where this case is going. I pretty much know what my decision is going to be at this point, but by all means if you feel compelled to enlighten me with your cross examination, but remember that I have already made up my mind about the evidence ....” Id. at 188. Often, a good test of credibility is how well one's story stands up to cross-examination. The IJ never considered this possibility and passed judgment before the government lawyer even asked his first question.
Though the IJ’s conduct may not rise to the level of a due process violation, it certainly showed the kind of partiality and bias that warrants particularly close scrutiny on review, which it did not receive.