[00:00:24] Speaker 01:
policy.

[00:00:25] Speaker 01:
Also, the petition provided logical and reasonable explanation for the alleged discrepancies.

[00:00:33] Speaker 01:
First, the petition explained that he has no experience filling out the asylum application form.

[00:00:39] Speaker 01:
Therefore, the admission of his

[00:00:56] Speaker 01:
And also, the I.J.

[00:00:58] Speaker 01:
did not ask the petitioner what he meant by negligence.

[00:01:02] Speaker 01:
The I.J.

[00:01:02] Speaker 01:
cannot face adverse credibility.

[00:01:23] Speaker 00:
But the IJ asked three different times about the Chinese home address.

[00:01:30] Speaker 01:
How was that insufficient?

[00:01:50] Speaker 00:
a position to not believe your client.

[00:01:52] Speaker 00:
You know, just because he says it's negligence, does the IJ automatically have to agree it's negligence?

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He asked about it, I have no experience, my negligence.

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You're saying that the rule says, the IJ has to say, well, what do you mean by negligence, or I don't believe that, give me a better explanation.

[00:02:53] Speaker 01:
that the information was accurate, that the prepare of a front actually did go through the front with him.

[00:03:01] Speaker 04:
Okay, well then let me move to where you say these are trivial.

[00:03:40] Speaker 01:
reasonable explanation for go ahead for the inconsistency because he explained he testified that his ex-wife filed for divorce without his knowledge he did not have any opportunity but his explanation for the discrepancy was the entirety of his explanation was she's a liar right it's possible

[00:04:16] Speaker 04:
IJ in your

[00:04:45] Speaker 01:
his opportunity to explain.

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But at bottom, the IJ is entitled to disbelieve an explanation.

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Do you agree with that?

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That's what judges do.

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We hear from people and sometimes people think their explanation is perfectly reasonable and sometimes you have to, but sometimes we don't believe them.

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And so what I'm hearing

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that your client said because it was reasonable in your view?

[00:05:51] Speaker 00:
No, that's not what I'm arguing.

[00:05:54] Speaker 01:
I believe that both the BIA and the IJ, in the IJ

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other.

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The other side's always going to say, well, you didn't give enough weight to my testimony.

[00:06:32] Speaker 00:
But if we weighed both of them and we came to a different conclusion, that kind of puts you up a creek without a paddle.

[00:06:39] Speaker 00:
Okay.

[00:06:39] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:06:40] Speaker 01:
But Your Honor, Your Honor, you need to understand that the divorce decree, according to divorce decree, everything is according

[00:07:05] Speaker 04:
I don't know why.

[00:07:07] Speaker 04:
Probably she did not love me anymore.

[00:07:10] Speaker 04:
This was why she would supposedly lie.

[00:07:13] Speaker 04:
So the judge gave your client these chances.

[00:07:17] Speaker 04:
The judge knew your client wasn't there, but it sounds like an answer to Judge Callahan's question.

[00:07:23] Speaker 04:
It's like the judge had to accept what your client said, and I don't understand that.

[00:07:28] Speaker 01:
No, no.

[00:07:29] Speaker 01:
That's not my kind of position.

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My kind of position is that the

[00:07:36] Speaker 01:
everything it all came from the ex-wife.

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My client did not have a chance to participate in it, so it should be real suspiciously.

[00:08:06] Speaker 01:
I think he submitted documentary evidence about the sterilization.

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Of an abortion.

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He said she had a state-ordered abortion.

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Right.

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Is there evidence of that in the other medical records or anything other than he said that?

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I think he offered his testimony.

[00:08:57] Speaker 02:
My name is Bo Stanton and I'm here today on behalf of the United States Attorney General.

[00:09:01] Speaker 02:
The petition for review in this case must be denied because based on the evidence, it is impossible to determine what to believe in this case.

[00:09:11] Speaker 02:
The first major inconsistency has already been hit upon by this court.

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Petitioners testified that he had lived with his wife from 1998 up until 2007 in a normal, happy marriage.

[00:09:29] Speaker 02:
they were so happy they were still in love, but then all of a sudden, there's a divorce decree that is issued two months prior to when he leaves China.

[00:09:39] Speaker 02:
And it says that his wife went to the courts, demanded that she requested a divorce because, and I'm going to go through what is an actual divorce decree, his wife alleged, that there was no mutual understanding before the marriage.

[00:09:55] Speaker 02:
daughter was born, that was a strain on their relationship.

[00:09:59] Speaker 02:
And the petitioner, he himself courted his wife, failed to hold a regular job, constantly drank, caused trouble.

[00:10:05] Speaker 02:
And after that home was demolished in 1998, and this is the home address that he used consistently throughout the documentation, up until he testified later to a different address.

[00:10:16] Speaker 02:
So it was this home that was then demolished that they were then given a compensation for.

[00:10:23] Speaker 02:
petitioner took all the compensation fund, left, and she had never seen him since.

[00:10:28] Speaker 02:
And then the court, if you look at Divorce Creek, made specific findings.

[00:10:32] Speaker 02:
It said in July of 1999, the defendant frequently had quarrels with the plaintiff, and then he was drunk most of the time, and then the wife would go back to her mother's house after their home was demolished in 1998 and live with her mother.

[00:10:46] Speaker 02:
And they never lived together ever since.

[00:10:49] Speaker 04:
Did the government offer any evidence

[00:10:57] Speaker 04:
So for all we know, the rule in China could be if there's an uncontested divorce, the court just enters the findings based on the statement from the party seeking the divorce.

[00:11:11] Speaker 02:
I mean, it's reasonable to speculate that conclusion with no evidence in the record, but if you go look at the

[00:11:40] Speaker 02:
141 142 of the record.

[00:11:43] Speaker 02:
It says within that document that this decree is based on the statements of petitioner's wife and separate written documentation.

[00:11:50] Speaker 02:
That's where I'm getting this language from.

[00:11:52] Speaker 03:
But we have no way of analyzing that.

[00:11:56] Speaker 03:
Correct Your Honor.

[00:11:57] Speaker 03:
Our court would have no way of analyzing that just to follow up on Judge Bennett's question.

[00:12:01] Speaker 02:
You're right.

[00:12:01] Speaker 02:
We do not know

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and was unable to do so.

[00:12:14] Speaker 02:
And they made several attempts, according to this divorce decree, to reach the petitioner and his whereabouts.

[00:12:20] Speaker 02:
If you actually go look at the document on one page, AR 141, says his whereabouts are unknown.

[00:12:26] Speaker 02:
And so, between the alleged words of the petitioner's wife of him being absent since her

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of this document.

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On top of that, this document wasn't submitted by the government.

[00:12:48] Speaker 02:
This document was submitted by Petitioner himself.

[00:12:51] Speaker 02:
And so this document that he submitted to support his own case actually undercuts this case.

[00:12:56] Speaker 02:
And so that's the reliability of this document.

[00:12:58] Speaker 02:
Is it on them?

[00:12:59] Speaker 02:
That burden isn't on the government.

[00:13:01] Speaker 02:
That burden was on Petitioner to prove the authenticity, the reliability of that document.

[00:13:23] Speaker 02:
of his claim.

[00:13:25] Speaker 02:
Unfortunately, this document undercuts his entire claim because if you step back and look at the overall

[00:13:50] Speaker 02:
The second narrative is based on the testimony of Petitioner.

[00:13:54] Speaker 02:
And Petitioner would switch the narrative.

[00:13:57] Speaker 02:
He would say, no, no, no, I wasn't at that original address that I claimed to live in, you know, my entire life until I left China.

[00:14:02] Speaker 02:
No, instead, we actually moved to a new address in 1998 because the home was demolished.

[00:14:08] Speaker ?:
That's the second narrative.

[00:14:10] Speaker ?:
The third narrative is the one provided by the divorce decree.

[00:14:13] Speaker 02:
You have where his wife claims not

[00:14:18] Speaker 02:
husband, he was at home.

[00:14:21] Speaker 02:
After we had our home demolished, we were homeless, but we had a compensation fund, and that compensation fund was taken by him, and he left, ever so often, ever again.

[00:14:31] Speaker 02:
I had to move back home with my mother to raise my only child, so three years.

[00:14:36] Speaker 00:
So we've got, I think, if you listen to Petitioner's Council, I think

[00:14:58] Speaker 00:
by a third party, the I.J.

[00:15:01] Speaker 00:
is forced to choose between two possibilities.

[00:15:04] Speaker 00:
If both are plausible, aren't we required to not disturb the I.J.'

[00:15:10] Speaker 00:
's choice?

[00:15:11] Speaker 02:
You are correct, Your Honor.

[00:15:13] Speaker 02:
This Court's view of review is deferential, and so if there are possible explanations, multiple possible explanations based on the evidence, you defer to the immigration judge.

[00:15:22] Speaker 02:
But on top of that, there is no compelling evidence, and there's record

[00:15:31] Speaker 00:
was not a supported basis for the adverse determination, do we have to remand?

[00:15:41] Speaker 00:
And the reason that I'm asking you on this, the briefing in this case was completed before this court decided along, which did away

[00:16:06] Speaker 02:
underpinning the adverse credibility determination, not merely to.

[00:16:09] Speaker 02:
So if you were to drop the determination letter as a basis for upholding the adverse credibility determination, you have this major inconsistency.

[00:16:43] Speaker 02:
I'm going to give you a little bit of an example of that.

[00:17:16] Speaker 00:
because of his...

[00:17:43] Speaker ?:
and you can find this on the record at 261, and the preparer, Nancy Sanchez, of a local law office here in Pasadena, signs it under penalty as well, and says that the completed application was read to applicant in her own native language, and he or she understood it prior to signing this.

[00:18:03] Speaker 02:
Then, if you go to the record, there's a supplement to this affirmative asylum application that was filled out, not only by the petitioner, but an asylum officer who also

[00:18:16] Speaker 02:
in his native language, he understood what was in it, and then signed it.

[00:18:21] Speaker 02:
So this idea that he filled out this application through negligence, if anything, if I'm being generous, is suspect.

[00:18:27] Speaker 02:
It's just our way along.

[00:18:29] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:18:43] Speaker 03:
circumstances analysis.

[00:18:45] Speaker 03:
Correct.

[00:18:46] Speaker 03:
So why shouldn't this case be sent back for a determination of the impact of the termination date inconsistency?

[00:19:08] Speaker 02:
I've noticed I have a red blinking light.

[00:19:10] Speaker 02:
I want to get

[00:19:17] Speaker 02:
and why this one finding might, in theory, undermine the entire finding.

[00:19:24] Speaker 02:
Well, in this case, the immigration judge, Board of Immigration, did look at the totality of circumstances, not having that later case that would come up to say to do so.

[00:19:31] Speaker 02:
And they found multiple

[00:20:02] Speaker ?:
the termination date of the inconsistency.

[00:20:05] Speaker ?:
You're right, Your Honor.

[00:20:06] Speaker 02:
I think I can focus on these other inconsistencies that are... I'm not blaming anybody.

[00:20:11] Speaker 03:
Certainly the law has changed.

[00:20:14] Speaker 03:
Alam, as you noted, was enunciated after the proceedings in this case.

[00:20:21] Speaker 02:
Why not send the case back on this issue?

[00:20:34] Speaker 02:
and restritability determination.

[00:21:01] Speaker 02:
of the adverse credibility determination.

[00:21:03] Speaker 02:
Instead, it did what it was supposed to do.

[00:21:05] Speaker 02:
It looked at the totality of the circumstances.

[00:21:07] Speaker 02:
And in looking at the totality of the circumstances, it noted that among the reasons that it was giving for doubting petitioners' claim, one of them was the termination letter.

[00:21:16] Speaker ?:
But there were all these other reasons.

[00:21:51] Speaker 02:
credibility determination and that is fatal to the asylum.

[00:22:29] Speaker 02:
He left China in 2007 and I think he came to the United States in 2007.

[00:22:39] Speaker 03:
When did his case first come to the attention of the immigration authorities?

[00:23:21] Speaker 02:
this case for lack of prosecution.

[00:23:55] Speaker 00:
minutes for rebuttal.

[00:23:59] Speaker 01:
Your Honor, the government counsel said multiple attempts by the Chinese court were made to reach the petitioner, but to no avail.

[00:24:08] Speaker 01:
But there's nothing in the divorce judgment indicates that multiple attempts were made to reach the petitioner.

[00:24:15] Speaker 01:
According to the divorce judgment, the petitioner was satisfied

[00:24:20] Speaker 01:
with the legal notification by this court and nothing, there's no explanation as to what legal notification.

[00:24:30] Speaker 01:
So there's, we don't know whether multiple attempts were made by the Chinese court to reach the petitioner.

[00:24:36] Speaker 01:
And all the facts cited by the government counsel from this divorce judgment all came from his ex-wife.

[00:24:44] Speaker 01:
So it's just a one sided presentation by his ex-wife.

[00:24:48] Speaker 01:
And also with regard to,

[00:24:59] Speaker 01:
A petitioner has a reasonable explanation about the alleged inconsistency.

[00:25:05] Speaker 01:
The abortion took place on April 16, 2007, and the petitioner was detained for three days.

[00:25:12] Speaker 01:
Assuming that he was released on April 19, a petitioner testified that he got a determination letter two days after he was released.

[00:25:23] Speaker 01:
The determination letter was stated April 21, 2007.

[00:25:31] Speaker 01:
and the date of the letter.

[00:25:33] Speaker 01:
And although the petitioner testified that he got the letter on April 22nd, not April 21st, the inconsistency was so trivial that it should not form the basis of an adverse credibility determination.

[00:25:50] Speaker 01:
And according to the law of this circuit,

[00:25:56] Speaker 01:
For instance, in the Rand versus Holder, 6.48, 5.3, 10.79.

[00:26:26] Speaker 01:
the alleged discrepancies are far less significant than those in rent.

[00:26:33] Speaker 01:
Therefore, they do not support an adverse credibility determination and the case should be remanded.