Court Opinion

ID: 9498081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:07:39.337396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:36.497768
License: Public Domain

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the Litis’ petition for review should be denied in part and dismissed in part and its reasoning except in Part II. A.1, I write separately to note my disagreement with that part of the majority’s opinion (Part II.A.1) finding that the BIA erred in deferring to the IJ’s determination that lead petitioner Ferdinand Liti was not credible.
This court reviews credibility determinations under the substantial evidence standard. Sylla v. INS, 388 F.3d 924, 925 (6th Cir.2004). “This is a deferential standard: A reviewing court should not reverse simply because it is convinced that it would have decided the case differently.” Id. at 925-26 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In making the adverse credibility determination, the IJ in this case pointed to the inconsistencies between Liti’s testimony at the removal hearing and the Litis’ application for asylum:
For example, in his 1-589 applications, there was no mention of his having participated in the toppling of [Stalin’s] monument during a major anticommunist protest in Albania, nor was there any mention of respondent’s leadership role in crashing the gates of the German Embassy with his own vehicle, and with *643respect to these omissions there were no plausible explanations by respondents for [the] absence of two major events supporting his claim for relief. Based on these omissions, the Court finds respondent’s credibility questionable and believes his testimonial claims of being singly responsible for the collapse of communist rule in Albania, [which he] made during one point in the hearing, to be the result of embellishment rather than any fact.
These were not “irrelevant inconsistencies],” cf. id. at 926 (citation omitted); rather, they were significant omissions that could reasonably create skepticism about whether Liti was telling the truth. Surely, the IJ was justified in finding Liti’s claim to be singly responsible for the fall of Albanian communism to be “embellishment.” The majority points out that the Litis evidently intended to enumerate specific incidents of their political activity (presumably, including the monument-toppling and embassy-crashing incidents) as part of their 1997 application for asylum, but, according to the Litis, their attorney neglected to attach a statement including such details. Even if the Litis’ attorney did neglect to attach the statement or statements, however, the Litis could have introduced such statements at the removal hearing as prior consistent statements. The failure .to do so suggests that they would not have been helpful in corroborating Liti’s testimony. Moreover, the Litis’ 1995 application for asylum contains a detailed narrative that fails to include major events such as the ones discussed by Liti at the hearing.
In sum, these omissions are striking and provide an adequate basis for an adverse credibility determination.