Court Opinion

ID: 9498919
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:32:26.995853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:10.003688
License: Public Domain

REENA RAGGI,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the court’s decision to grant the petition for review in this case and to remand for further proceedings to permit the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) to make specific findings as to whether petitioner Zhi Wei Pang adequately rebutted the presumption established by 8 C.F.R. § 208.3(c)(2) that he was aware of the contents of his 1993 asylum application. Thus, I join in Parts I and IIA of the majority decision. Nevertheless, because I do not agree with the majority’s wholesale criticism of the IJ’s other credibility-related findings, I must respectfully decline to join in Part IIB of the opinion.
*1131. The Need for Further Findings on Rebuttal of the § 208.3(c)(2) Presumption
Zhi Wei Pang, a Chinese national who entered the United States in May 1993, seeks relief from removal based on his wife’s alleged forcible sterilization in 1990. See Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d 66, 71-72 (2d Cir.2004) (discussing recognition of derivative spousal claims). The IJ, in a decision subsequently upheld by the BIA, denied relief on a specific finding that petitioner was not credible in his claim of forced sterilization. We are, of course, obliged to defer to the factual findings of the BIA and the IJ if they are supported by substantial evidence. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B) (providing that “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary”); see also Xiao Ji Chen v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 434 F.3d 144, 156-57 (2d Cir.2006); Jian Xing Huang v. United States INS, 421 F.3d 125, 128 (2d Cir.2005) (per curiam). Inconsistent statements by an asylum applicant about matters material to his claim of persecution generally constitute such substantial evidence. See Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d at 74; see also Majidi v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 77, 80-81 (2d Cir.2005).
In this case, the IJ noted, and the record confirms, significant, obvious inconsistencies in petitioner’s account of the alleged forcible sterilization between his 2001 hearing testimony and his 1993 asylum application. It is useful to identify these discrepancies.
At his asylum hearing, Pang testified that the sterilization occurred “[sjometime in August — mid-August” of 1990 when government officials came to his home and, in his presence, forcibly removed his wife. Hearing Tr. 56. Pang explained that, approximately a month earlier, on July 15, 1990, his wife had given birth to their second child, a son, in a government hospital near her brother’s home in Fuzhou. Because the couple had conceived the boy in violation of government family planning restrictions, they had spent several months in hiding prior to the child’s birth. In response to a direct question by his counsel, Pang stated that there had been “no problem at all” with family planning officials while his wife was at the hospital. Id. at 55. Within days of the couple and their children returning to their home village, however, five officials arrived at their home at “10 in the morning” and, despite his wife’s resistance, “force[d] her out of the house and put her into one of these paddy cab and took her away” to be sterilized. Id.
By contrast, petitioner’s 1993 asylum application stated that the sterilization had taken place while his wife was hospitalized in Fuzhou following the birth of their son: “In July, 1990, due to her difficult labor, my wife was sent to the hospital of the county and had a[ ] Caesarean birth. When my wife stayed in the hospital, the official forced her to have sterilization. It was so cruel treatment for my wife, she was very weak to refuse it.” 1993 Asylum Application ¶ 18. These obvious discrepancies, which by themselves constitute substantial evidence supporting the IJ’s adverse credibility ruling, see Majidi v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d at 80 (holding that dramatically different account of incident relating to persecution claim “offers substantial evidence in support of IJ’s credibility ruling”), necessarily preclude us from concluding that the IJ was compelled to credit Pang’s persecution claim, see Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d at 73-74.
On this appeal, however, Pang submits that the IJ erred in admitting his 1993 asylum application into evidence or in re*114lying on it to support an adverse credibility ruling. Like my colleagues in the majority, I conclude that, because petitioner acknowledges that he did sign the 1993 application, the document was properly received in evidence at the hearing and entitled to the presumption established by 8 C.F.R. § 208.3(e)(2) (recognizing that “applicant’s signature establishes a presumption that the applicant is aware of the contents of the [asylum] application”). That presumption, however, is subject to rebuttal. Here, Pang attempted to rebut the regulatory presumption through his own testimony about the circumstances under which his 1993 asylum application was prepared. Specifically, he testified that the application was prepared for him by an agency without his having any idea as to its content. He stated that no one ever read the 1993 application to him. Agency representatives simply told him to sign the document. Upon subsequently discovering that this 1993 application was “quite a mess,” Pang asked a law firm to help him prepare a second asylum application in 2000, although he testified that, once again, no one read the completed document to him. Id.
It is, of course, not the task of a reviewing court to weigh Pang’s explanation for his lack of familiarity with the contents of his 1993 asylum application or to conclude that the explanation excuses any discrepancies between the application and petitioner’s hearing testimony. See generally Jin Yu Lin v. Dep’t of Justice, 413 F.3d 188, 190-91 (2d Cir.2005) (observing that reviewing court may not itself justify contradictions or explain away inconsistencies in the hearing record); Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d at 74 (same). But, where, as in this case, a petitioner offers an explanation to rebut the § 208.3(c)(2) presumption, we can require the IJ to make a specific record finding as to whether that presumption has or has not been satisfactorily rebutted. See Gui Cun Liu v. Ashcroft, 372 F.3d 529, 534 (3d Cir.2004) (Alito, J.) (remanding petition because, inter alia, IJ failed to consider whether petitioner rebutted presumption under § 208.3). This is not to suggest that the IJ was here required to credit Pang’s explanation, but only to note that we cannot responsibly decide whether the IJ’s adverse credibility finding is fairly supported by substantial evidence absent such a determination. See generally Cao He Lin v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 428 F.3d 391, 403 (2d Cir.2005).
Of course, as this court has recently observed, “an error does not require a remand if the remand would be pointless because it is clear that the agency would adhere to its prior decision in the absence of error.” Xiao Ji Chen v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 434 F.3d at 161; see Cao He Lin v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 428 F.3d at 406. In this ease, the IJ cited a number of collateral reasons, in addition to the discrepancies between the 1993 asylum application and Pang’s hearing testimony, for questioning Pang’s credibility. Nevertheless, because the IJ based her adverse credibility determination on inconsistencies between the 1993 asylum application and Pang’s hearing testimony, which inconsistencies related to the forcible sterilization that was the crux of the persecution claim, I cannot confidently conclude that the IJ would have reached the same result had she found Pang to have rebutted the § 208.3(c)(2) presumption. Cf. Xiao Ji Chen v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 434 F.3d at 162. Accordingly, I join the court in deciding to remand this case for further findings by the IJ.
2. Other Factors Corroborating the IJ’s Adverse ■Credibility Finding Are Adequately Supported by the Record
To the extent the majority holds that none of the IJ’s other grounds for ques*115tioning Pang’s credibility is adequately supported by the record, I must respectfully disagree. Preliminarily, I observe that, while it is necessary to discuss these grounds individually, I do not here consider whether any one would alone support an adverse credibility finding sufficient to deny relief from removal. I consider only the majority’s apparent conclusion that the IJ erred in giving any consideration to the identified factors in assessing Pang’s credibility. While I share the majority’s concerns with respect to record support for the IJ’s implausibility finding relating to the registration of Pang’s children (particularly his son) while part of a family planning fine remained unpaid, see ante at 111, in all other respects, I do not think the IJ erred in considering the identified factors in her overall assessment of Pang’s credibility.
a. Inconsistencies Regarding IUD Checkivps
The majority concludes that the IJ erred in identifying an inconsistency in Pang’s testimony about his wife’s IUD checkups. The IJ found: “[I]t is very clear that the respondent indicated earlier today that his wife had been scheduled for IUD checkups and that she missed the scheduled IUD check-up. However, later today when I asked the respondent again the same question about IUD checkups, he indicated, no, his wife, never had an IUD checkup, and she was never scheduled for an IUD checkup.” IJ Decision at 46. The majority concludes that the record evidences no such inconsistency. In responding to the IJ’s inquiry, “Well, didn’t your wife have IUD exams,” Pang answered, “So after the IUD removal, she did not report for this checkup .... ” Hearing Tr. 52. The majority holds that the IJ erred in inferring from Pang’s use of the word “report” that he was referring to a scheduled checkup.
Without the benefit of having witnessed the exchange between the IJ and Pang on this point, I do not think this court can conclude, that the IJ erred as a matter of law in her understanding of Pang’s testimony. Pang’s statement that his wife did not “report for this checkup,” id. (emphasis added), could well have referenced the sort of routine scheduled IUD checkups about which we hear frequently in Chinese asylum cases. See, e.g., Yu Yin Yang v. Gonzales, 431 F.3d 84, 85-86 (2d Cir.2005) (concluding that inconsistencies in petitioner’s testimony regarding, inter alia, IUD checkups, supported IJ’s adverse credibility determination); see also Xia J. Lin v. Ashcroft, 385 F.3d 748, 754 (7th Cir.2004) (referencing evidence of strict enforcement of IUD reliability checkups). Thus, whether Pang’s subsequent testimony that his wife somehow never, had any scheduled IUD checkups clarified or contradicted this first statement was properly considered by the IJ in her overall assessment of petitioner’s credibility.
As we noted in Zhang, how a question and answer are understood by those present may differ significantly from how they appear to a reader on a cold printed page. See Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d at 73-74. Precisely because a reviewing court cannot glean from a transcript the demeanor and inflections that are critical to parties’ understandings of each other’s statements, our credibility review is narrowly circumscribed to ensuring that findings are not based on “a misstatement of the facts in the record []or bald speculation or caprice.” Id. at 74; see Borovikova v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 435 F.3d 151, 156 (2d Cir.2006) (“Because asylum determinations require intensive factual determinations that appellate courts are ill-suited to conduct, our review of factual determinations by an IJ is tightly circumscribed.”). We do not, *116however, ourselves choose among possible interpretations of the facts.
Here, the IJ did not misstate the record. Rather, having heard Pang’s testimony, the IJ reasonably construed Pang’s statement about his wife “not reporting] for this checkup” to reference acknowledgment of scheduled checkups. Although members of this court, who did not hear Pang’s testimony, might construe the statements differently, in these circumstances, I think we are obliged to defer to the IJ. See Zhou Yun Zhang v. United States INS, 386 F.3d at 74 (noting that we cannot reverse agency determination simply because we disagree with its assessment of the facts); see also Xiao Ji Chen v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 434 F.3d at 157-58 (stating that “our limited role as an appellate court does not permit us to engage in an independent evaluation of the cold record or ask ourselves whether, if we were sitting as fact-finders in the first instance, we would credit or discredit an applicant’s testimony”).
Although I am in the minority in my view of the IJ’s identification of an inconsistency in Pang’s IUD testimony, because the panel unanimously agrees that a remand is warranted in this case, I trust that my colleagues in the majority do not foreclose the IJ from further developing the record, either with respect to evidence or findings, on this or any other point relevant to Pang’s credibility.
b. The “No Sense” Finding About Pang’s Delay in Concealing His Wife’s Unauthorized Second Pregnancy
Pang testified that, in 1989, after family planning officials required his wife to be fitted with an IUD following the birth of their first child, a daughter, the couple had the IUD removed in an effort to conceive a son. By the end of the year, Pang’s wife was pregnant. Sometime in April or May 1990, family planning officials discovered the pregnancy and attempted to take Pang’s wife for a forcible abortion. Pang claims that the couple was able to persuade the officials to allow Pang’s wife to surrender for an abortion the following day. Rather than surrender, however, the couple fled, hiding for three to four months with a friend and, eventually, with Pang’s wife’s brother. Pang testified that his son was born at Fuzhou Number One Hospital, which was across the street from the brother’s home.
The IJ declined to credit this account, observing that it made “no sense” that the Pangs would have remained in their own village well into the second-trimester of an unauthorized pregnancy. IJ Decision at 12. “Why would this couple not protect this pregnancy, when they claim that they, in fact, wanted this child to be born. The respondent and his wife apparently did nothing to protect this pregnancy until well into the pregnancy.” Id. The majority dismisses this conclusion as “impermissible conjecture.” Ante at 109. It concludes that “[t]he IJ’s assumption that most people in Pang’s position would have fled at an earlier point is not self-evident and is not supported by the record.” Id. The majority specifically faults the IJ for failing to advise Pang that an explanation for his delayed departure was expected. See id. at 109-10.
In fact, Pang was afforded an opportunity on cross-examination to explain the timing of his departure from his village. See Ming Shi Xue v. BIA, 439 F.3d 111, 125 n. 19 (2d Cir.2006) (recognizing that cross-examination may afford adequate opportunity for explanation). He explained that, in its second trimester, his wife’s pregnancy was only showing “slightly” and he was “still looking for [the] right location to put her in safe place in hiding.” Hearing Tr. 64. Even on review of a cold record, *117Pang’s account of a leisurely five-month search for the “right location” in which to hide his wife sounds curious, particularly in light of the serious consequences that would attend discovery of her pregnancy as evidenced by Pang’s own dramatic account of his wife’s narrow escape from forced abortion followed by the couple’s overnight flight. Presumably because Pang, who was represented by counsel throughout his asylum hearing, offered no redirect testimony that his client had taken any other actions during the five months at issue to minimize discovery, which might further have explained the delayed departure, the IJ reasonably concluded that there was no other such evidence. Certainly Pang does not suggest otherwise either in his appeal papers to the BIA or his petition to this court. In these circumstances, I cannot conclude that the IJ was compelled to credit Pang’s account of the circumstances of his family’s flight from their village.
If the IJ had found Pang not credible based solely on delayed departure or inadequate concealment, I might, nevertheless, agree with the majority that further record development was warranted before conclusively denying relief from removal, particularly since the matter of village flight is somewhat collateral to Pang’s claim of persecution. See generally Ming Shi Xue v. BIA, 439 F.3d at 123 (holding that, where adverse credibility determination is based on “latent or otherwise not obvious or ‘dramatic’” discrepancies, IJ must identify inconsistencies and afford alien opportunity to explain). But where, as in this case, an applicant’s credibility is already impugned by dramatic discrepancies in his account of the claimed sterilization, I do not think an IJ errs by noting other implausibilities in the applicant’s testimony without exhaustively probing possible explanations for each one. The IJ must ensure that the record as a whole is adequately developed to permit her to offer specific and cogent reasons for her credibility determination. See Zhou Yun Zhang v. United, States INS, 386 F.3d at 78. Where, as in this case, an IJ has both identified such reasons based on dramatic inconsistencies and the applicant has been given an opportunity to address collateral implausibilities in his testimony, we have not held that such implausibilities can be given no weight in corroborating an adverse credibility ruling unless all possible explanations are fully explored. Cf. Xiao Ji Chen v. United States Dep’t of Justice, 434 F.3d at 159 n. 13 (“Although we have stated that an IJ is required to take into account significant factual assertions offered by a petitioner, we have never required, and we do not require here, that an IJ expressly parse or refute on the record each and every one of a petitioner’s purported explanations for testimonial inconsistencies or evidentiary gaps.” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)).
Even if the IJ could have developed the record more on this point, I cannot agree with the majority that the IJ’s finding, as it stands, was based on “impermissible conjecture.” Ante at 109. While an IJ’s duty to develop the record may sometimes overlap with his duty to avoid “speculation, conjecture, and flawed reasoning,” id. at 107 (citing Pang’s argument), these concerns should not be treated as interchangeable. Implicit in the idea of “flawed” reasoning is the IJ’s resort to an analytic process that the law does not recognize. To illustrate, a reasoning process that refuses to believe evidence offered on Tuesdays or through witnesses whose names end in vowels would obviously be flawed. Similarly, a failure to comply with certain procedural rules could, in some instances, result in legally flawed reasoning. Speculation or conjecture, to the extent it reaches conclusions not reasonably *118drawn from the evidence, even when viewed through the prism of common sense and human experience, might also be characterized as a form of flawed reasoning. But as this court recently noted in reviewing an asylum petition, “[t]he point at which a finding that testimony is implausible ceases to be sustainable as reasonable, and instead, is justifiably labeled ‘speculation,’ in the absence of an IJ’s adequate explanation, cannot be located with precision.” Ming Xia Chen v. BIA, 435 F.3d 141, 145 (2d Cir.2006). Drawing a useful analogy from our “clearly erroneous” review of bench trial findings, Ming Xia Chen observed that we uphold such findings “unless we are ‘left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed.’ ” Id. (quoting Inwood Laboratories, Inc. v. Ives Laboratories, Inc., 456 U.S. 844, 855, 102 S.Ct. 2182, 72 L.Ed.2d 606 (1982) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Applying that principle to this case, whether or not members of this panel would have reached the same conclusion as the IJ if we had actually heard Pang’s testimony, I cannot say that I am left with a “definite and firm conviction” that the IJ clearly erred in concluding that it made “no sense” for Pang and his wife to remain in their village well into her unauthorized second pregnancy without taking any apparent protective precautions. The circumstances of the couple’s eventual departure — their surprising ability to persuade officials to delay a compelled abortion, their successful flight in that twenty-four hour period with a young child in tow, documentary inconsistencies as to whether the Pangs fled alone or together — plainly raise questions about the veracity of Pang’s overall account of this incident. Accordingly, I cannot conclude that it was impermissible conjecture for the IJ to factor the Pangs’ five-month failure to take any action to conceal the wife’s unauthorized pregnancy in assessing his credibility-
c. The Uneventful Birth of Pang’s Son
The IJ found implausible Pang’s testimony that his wife was able to deliver her son at Fuzhou Hospital with “no problem at all” from family planning officials. Hearing Tr. 55. The majority concludes that this finding was also “speculative” and unsupported by the record. Ante at 110. I disagree.
The IJ’s experience with Chinese asylum applications, like this court’s own, permits recognition that China is a highly regulated and controlled society, particularly in limiting the growth of its huge population. Even if we were to assume that a Chinese government hospital would, without question, have delivered a woman who presented herself in advanced labor, it is hardly likely that, after delivery, the woman could have avoided answering questions about her identity, her marital and family status, and her residence, thereby attracting the attention of family planning officials. See generally Ming Xia Chen v. BIA, 435 F.3d at 146 (upholding IJ finding of implausibility, without further explanation, regarding applicant’s claims that (1) Chinese authorities could locate her in city of over one million people simply by looking in neighborhood where young people lived, or (2) she could escape because her jailors were not paying attention). Indeed, if we were to assume that, in China, a pregnant woman only had to get herself to a hospital in another village or town to give birth to an unauthorized child without attracting the attention of family planning officials, we would have far less reason to be concerned about birth control persecution.
Although, on remand, the IJ may be able to develop the record further on this *119point, as well as on her other findings, such development may be unnecessary if she rejects Pang’s rebuttal argument with respect to his awareness of the content of his 1993 application. As discussed supra at 113-14, that application, which reports that Pang’s wife was forcibly sterilized while hospitalized in connection with her son’s birth, directly contradicts Pang’s hearing testimony, thereby providing substantial evidence to support the IJ’s ruling.
e. Ancillary Inconsistencies
To the extent the IJ noted three omissions in Pang’s asylum applications as a basis for questioning his credibility, the majority observes that the omissions concerned matters that were ancillary to Pang’s claim of persecution. Ante at 111—12. Although that conclusion might be debatable, there is no point in pursuing this issue. While evidentiary discrepancies that are not substantially material to the claimed persecution “cannot form the sole basis for an adverse credibility finding,” Secaida-Rosales v. INS, 331 F.3d 297, 308 (2d Cir.2003) (internal quotation marks omitted), where, as in this case, material discrepancies or implausibilities support an adverse credibility determination, the law does not preclude an IJ from noting that the determination is reinforced by ancillary discrepancies or implausibilities, see, e.g., Jin Hui Gao v. United States Attorney Gen., 400 F.3d 963, 964 (2d Cir.2005) (per curiam) (upholding IJ’s adverse credibility determination where, in addition to discrepancies as to dates and surrounding details, petitioner’s hearing testimony differed substantially from asylum application and asylum interview, in which he failed to mention his wife’s forced abortion).
3. Conclusion
In sum, I agree with my colleagues in the majority that a remand is necessary in this case to permit the IJ to make specific findings as to whether Pang has satisfactorily rebutted the § 208.3(c)(2) presumption of awareness otherwise applicable to his 1993 asylum application. Absent such rebuttal, I would conclude that the discrepancies between Pang’s 1993 asylum application and his hearing testimony concerning the circumstances of his wife’s alleged forcible sterilization constitute substantial evidence to support the IJ’s adverse credibility determination. Further, unlike the majority, I believe that the IJ’s other grounds for questioning Pang’s credibility reinforce, rather than undermine, the adverse credibility determination. Accordingly, I join only in the introduction and Parts I and IIA of the court’s opinion. I do not join in Part IIB.