MIRABEL E. MUNYUH, AKA Mirabel Endam Munyuh, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent.
No. 19-72890
Agency No. A215-821-395
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
Filed August 25, 2021
Before: Danny J. Boggs, A. Wallace Tashima, and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Boggs
On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals
Argued and Submitted May 3, 2021 Seattle, Washington
*
Immigration
The panel granted Mirabel Munyuh’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals denying asylum and related relief on adverse credibility grounds, vacated the order of removal, and remanded for further proceedings.
The panel held that the immigration judge erred by failing to give specific, cogent reasons for rejecting Munyuh’s reasonable, plausible explanations for the discrepancies tied to her declaration concerning the distance she traveled in a police truck before escaping on foot after officers raped her and being rescued by her husband. The panel held that the IJ further erred by discounting Munyuh’s supporting documentation without giving her adequate notice and opportunity to provide corroborative evidence.
The panel wrote that from its reading of the record, the IJ seemed determined to pick every nit she could find. Besides erring procedurally, the IJ discounted probative evidence on flimsy grounds and displayed a dubious understanding of how rape survivors ought to act. The panel explained that although it gives great deference to the IJ as factfinder, substantial-evidence review does not require it to credit the credibility finding of an IJ who cherry-picks from—or misconstrues—the record to reach it. Rather, the IJ must consider the totality of the circumstances, and all
COUNSEL
Ronald D. Richey (argued), Law Office of Ronald D. Richey, Rockville, Maryland, for Petitioner.
Rachel P. Berman-Vaporis (argued), Trial Attorney; Mary Jane Candaux, Assistant Director; Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.
OPINION
BOGGS, Circuit Judge:
Mirabel Munyuh, a Cameroonian national, petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board). After removal proceedings, an immigration judge (IJ) denied Ms. Munyuh’s application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture, and the Board dismissed Ms. Munyuh’s appeal of that denial. Exercising jurisdiction under
A. Background
Cameroon is a sub-Saharan African republic dominated by a strong presidency. The current president, Paul Biya, has been in power since 1982. In 2016, a sociopolitical crisis began in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon. Those regions were formerly British mandates; the rest of the country became a French colony after World War I. Thus, these two regions are predominately Protestant and English-speaking, and the rest of Cameroon is predominately Catholic and French-speaking (although Biya’s government is officially secular).
Violence has broken out between separatist groups in the anglophone regions and Cameroonian security forces. Both the separatists and the state’s security forces have engaged in human-rights violations, including unlawful and arbitrary killings, torture, forced disappearances, prolonged detention in harsh, life-threatening prison conditions, interference with privacy rights, use of child soldiers, and violence against women.
Ms. Munyuh is a Protestant and anglophone, although Moghamo, not English, is her mother tongue. Before the incident leading to Ms. Munyuh’s flight, she lived in Santa, a small township about 23 kilometers (14 miles) south of Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Region. She taught physical education there, and, although not a marathon runner, she remained physically active, running for about an hour at a time three days per week.
She is married and has one child, a 14-year-old son. Both her husband and son are still living in Cameroon. Ms. Munyuh’s husband lived separately from her and
B. Ms. Munyuh’s Account
Ms. Munyuh gave a harrowing account of her treatment by Cameroonian police in July 2018. According to her, the morning after an old friend from primary school stayed at Ms. Munyuh’s house, officers forced open her front door, ransacked her home, and took her into custody. Ms. Munyuh’s friend was suspected of being a member of the SCNC, an anglophone separatist group, and the officers accused Ms. Munyuh of being a member too.
The officers threw Ms. Munyuh to the ground and kicked and slapped her, causing swelling on her face and legs. After this beating, the officers took her to a detention facility in the city of Bamenda and put her into a cell with about thirty others. Ms. Munyuh did not know any of the other people in the cell, nor did she know why they had been detained. The police did not give her food or water, did not let her communicate with her family or attorney, and continued beating her. She remained in the cell for 15 or 16 hours.
That night, about ten officers loaded Ms. Munyuh onto a truck with the other detainees from her cell; they were all to be taken to the central prison in Yaoundé, capital of Cameroon. At some point along the way—the actual time and distance being a point of dispute in this case—the truck broke down. While the truck was stopped, officers took the women out of the truck and into the bush to sexually assault them. Two officers raped Ms. Munyuh. After the second officer raped Ms. Munyuh, he did not stay close to her. Before she could be raped by a third officer, she gathered her
Traveling by foot until daybreak, Ms. Munyuh eventually reached a phone booth in the town of Bafia, in the central region of Cameroon. She learned the name of the town from the owner of the phone booth and called her husband, who was in Yaoundé, to tell him what had happened and where she was. He told her to continue to hide in the bush while he drove to Bafia, about two hours away from Yaoundé. He picked up Ms. Munyuh and then drove her to a hospital back in Yaoundé. Ms. Munyuh was examined by a doctor, who determined that her condition warranted hospital admission. Ms. Munyuh provided the IJ with a copy of her medical report, detailing bruises and tenderness across her head, chest, back, and feet, and swelling and lacerations of her genitals supporting a conclusion of forceful vaginal penetration. Afraid that the police would find her if she stayed at the hospital, Ms. Munyuh declined to be admitted, and the doctor instead assigned two nurses to provide follow-up care at her husband’s residence.
The police continued to search for Ms. Munyuh after her escape. A court summons and an arrest warrant were issued for her, and her father was jailed for three days until he promised to help police find her. She provided the IJ with a copy of the arrest warrant, which identifies her as “suspected of being a member of the [SCNC],” and an affidavit from her father, who describes the harassment he suffered from the police “on the premise that [he] was intentionally refusing to disclose Mirabel’s whereabouts.”
Ms. Munyuh fled the country by bus to Ghana by way of Nigeria. She flew to Ecuador, and from there worked her
C. Removal Proceedings
Shortly after her entry into the United States, an asylum officer determined that Ms. Munyuh had a credible fear of returning to Cameroon. After receiving a notice to appear for removal proceedings, Ms. Munyuh obtained counsel and applied for asylum and withholding of removal on the ground of imputed political opinion. The members of her family remaining in Cameroon gathered and sent her supporting documentation for her asylum application. Along with her medical report, arrest warrant, and father’s affidavit, those documents also included affidavits from her husband, her neighbor, her employer, and her attorney (who was the notary for the other four affidavits) and copies of official Cameroonian records, including her marriage certificate, verification of employment, and letters from her employer documenting her absence from work. The IJ admitted those documents at the removal proceedings.
Ms. Munyuh was the sole witness at her removal hearing. On direct examination, she testified to the account above. On cross-examination, the government questioned Ms. Munyuh’s timeline of events. Specifically, Ms. Munyuh testified that from Bamenda to Yaoundé is around a six- or seven-hour drive, but her written declaration attached to her asylum application had stated that the truck broke down after only four or five kilometers. If that were the case, then it would have been impossible for Ms. Munyuh to have traveled on foot the remaining distance to Bafia, hundreds of kilometers away, by sunrise. Ms. Munyuh responded that she had only estimated the distance the truck had traveled,
The government questioned Ms. Munyuh about another discrepancy. During her credible-fear interview, she had testified that she did not know whether her primary-school friend was a member of SCNC, but during the removal hearing, she testified that she knew that her friend was a member. Ms. Munyuh explained that she gave that answer during her asylum interview because she was afraid.
After the government’s cross-examination, the IJ continued to press Ms. Munyuh on her timeline discrepancy. Ms. Munyuh responded affirmatively to questions about whether the truck had traveled longer than an hour and longer than two hours before it broke down. When challenged on the discrepancy between her declaration’s statement that the truck had gone only a few kilometers and her testimony that the truck had traveled at least two hours, Ms. Munyuh responded that she did not know how far a kilometer is. After a recess, Ms. Munyuh ultimately testified on redirect that the truck had gone about four or five hours before breaking down.
The IJ also questioned Ms. Munyuh on several other issues. After testimony that she had traveled on foot about two or three hours before she reached the phone booth, the IJ confronted her again with her asylum declaration, in which Ms. Munyuh had stated that she had run “the whole night.” When asked why her estimate at the hearing was different from her estimate in the declaration, Ms. Munyuh gave no answer. The IJ also noted a discrepancy in Ms. Munyuh’s testimony about her father’s arrest (her testimony put his arrest one day earlier than the timeline in
The IJ asked what injuries Ms. Munyuh had sustained between her arrest and escape. Ms. Munyuh had earlier testified to bruising on her back, sides, feet, and face. When asked if there were additional injuries, Ms. Munyuh added that she had a swollen vulva. The IJ asked again if there had been anything else, to which Ms. Munyuh answered no. The IJ then asked if there had been any bleeding, to which Ms. Munyuh responded affirmatively, indicating vaginal bleeding. The IJ then asked why Ms. Munyuh had not testified to the bleeding earlier, to which she had no answer.
Finally, the IJ noted that Ms. Munyuh had not shown “any emotion particularly” during her testimony about the rape. Asked why, Ms. Munyuh did not directly answer but explained: “it’s not because I don’t . . . I don’t feel that I was being raped. I do feel it, your honor.” The IJ then contrasted Ms. Munyuh’s affect at the hearing with her emotions during the credible-fear interview, in which she had cried. Asked “why [she had been] able to express those emotions during the asylum officer interview” but not the hearing, Ms. Munyuh simply replied, “I don’t know, your honor.”
Based on the above discrepancies, the IJ made an adverse credibility determination. She also cited two additional discrepancies that she had not asked Ms. Munyuh to explain during the hearing. First, Ms. Munyuh had testified that Bafia, where she had called her husband, was “a village within Yaoundé,” but her husband nevertheless took two hours to reach her. Second, Ms. Munyuh had given her initial estimates of the police truck’s travel distance (in her asylum declaration) and date of her father’s arrest (in testimony)
The IJ also gave Ms. Munyuh’s documentary evidence “minimal weight,” citing several factors. First, “no identity documents were presented for any of the affiants,” “none of the affiants were subject to cross-examination,” and one of the affiants, who was the notary for the remaining affiants, was also Ms. Munyuh’s attorney and cousin and therefore an “interested party.” Second, Ms. Munyuh could not establish a “foundation or chain of custody” for the medical report, and the report had a “strange blue square around the [letterhead] seal.” Third, the remaining documents were not purported to be originals.
The IJ concluded that Ms. Munyuh had not met her burden to prove persecution or torture. She therefore denied her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.
D. Proceedings Before the Board
Ms. Munyuh appealed that decision to the Board, filing a brief pro se. (The government did not submit a brief.) Her brief addressed many of the inconsistencies raised by the IJ. She continued to insist that her original distance estimate was a mistake. She further stated that her silence or refusal to provide additional estimates in response to the government’s and IJ’s questions were because she feared making another incorrect estimate, especially because she could not remember the details with precision due to the stress surrounding the events.
The Board dismissed Ms. Munyuh’s appeal. Reviewing the IJ’s decision on findings of fact, including credibility
Even accepting the respondent’s explanations for the inconsistencies regarding her father’s arrest and her knowledge of her friend’s political affiliation, and her assertion that some of the inconsistencies are due to her lack of familiarity with her documents, her mental state at the time of her asylum interview, and the stress she felt when testifying, we find that the significant inconsistencies in the material aspects of her claim support an adverse credibility determination in her case. . . . Aside from any other inconsistences [sic], we find that the discrepancies in the distances, locations, and times involved in the respondent’s claim of her assault and escape are not minor or trivial, and go to the heart of her claim. The respondent has not provided a reasonable explanation for these material discrepancies underlying her claim.
Ms. Munyuh’s timely petition for review followed.
A. Standard of Review
The REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, div. B, 119 Stat. 231, 302, governs credibility determinations for asylum applications filed on or after May 11, 2005.
Considering the totality of the circumstances, and all relevant factors, a trier of fact may base a credibility determination on the demeanor, candor, or responsiveness of the applicant or witness, the inherent plausibility of the applicant’s or witness’s account, the consistency between the applicant’s or witness’s written and oral statements (whenever made and whether or not under oath, and considering the circumstances under which the statements were made), the internal consistency of each such statement, the consistency of such statements with other evidence of record . . . , and any inaccuracies or falsehoods in such statements, without regard to whether an inconsistency, inaccuracy, or falsehood goes to the heart of the applicant’s claim, or any other relevant factor.
Even so, we have identified limits to the deference we owe the agency. An IJ may not “cherry pick solely facts favoring an adverse credibility determination while ignoring facts that undermine that result.” Shrestha v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1034, 1040 (9th Cir. 2010). The credibility determination must “be ‘reasonable’ and ‘take into consideration the individual circumstances’ of the applicant.” Id. at 1041 (quoting Lin v. Mukasey, 521 F.3d 22, 28 n.3 (1st Cir. 2008)). The factfinder must provide “more than a vague reference to the ‘totality of the circumstances’ or recitation of naked conclusions that a petitioner’s testimony was inconsistent or implausible, that the petitioner was unresponsive, or that the petitioner’s demeanor undermined the petitioner’s credibility.” Id. at 1042. Thus, the agency “must provide a specific cogent reason for the adverse credibility finding.” Ibid. (quoting Gui v. INS, 280 F.3d 1217, 1225 (9th Cir. 2002)). Although the REAL ID Act removed our earlier threshold limitation on the types of inconsistencies that may support an adverse credibility determination, id. at 1043, the record must still reasonably
Additionally, the Act’s requirement that inconsistencies “be considered in light of the ‘totality of the circumstances, and all relevant factors’” indicates that the agency has a duty to consider a “petitioner’s explanation for a perceived inconsistency and other record evidence that sheds light on whether there is in fact an inconsistency at all.” Id. at 1043–44 (quoting
And if the agency’s decision “cannot be sustained upon its reasoning,” then “we must remand to allow the agency to decide any issues remaining in the case.” Solorio-Ruiz v. Sessions, 881 F.3d 733, 738 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Andia v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 1181, 1184 (9th Cir. 2004) (per curiam)), abrogated in part on other grounds by Stokeling v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 544 (2019), as recognized by United States v. Baldon, 956 F.3d 1115, 1121–22 (9th Cir. 2020).
1. Distance and Time Estimates
The primary inconsistency that the IJ identified in Ms. Munyuh’s testimony regarded how far the police truck had traveled from Bamenda to Yaoundé before breaking down. In both her written declaration attached to her asylum application as well as her initial testimony on cross-examination, Ms. Munyuh stated that the truck had traveled only four to five kilometers (2.5 to 3 miles), a tiny fraction of the over-300-kilometer trip to Yaoundé. If so, then Ms. Munyuh would have traveled about 242 kilometers (150 miles) on foot to Bafia before reaching the phone booth. Even at a constant running speed of 20 kilometers per hour (12 miles per hour), an unlikely prospect, she would have needed to run for more than 12 hours straight, far more than Ms. Munyuh’s estimate of two to three hours. And if Ms. Munyuh were correct that the truck had broken down very near Bamenda, then it would have taken far longer than two or three hours for her husband to reach her.
Confronted with this discrepancy, Ms. Munyuh stated that she had estimated her original distance because she was not sure how far the truck had gone. Pressed further on the issue, she testified that she did not know how far a kilometer is. She later agreed that the truck had traveled “longer than an hour” and “longer than two hours” in response to the IJ’s questions, and on redirect testified that the drive lasted “about four to five hours.”1
The IJ stated in her oral decision that the inconsistencies were not “adequately explained to establish why [Ms. Munyuh] gave an initial estimate without any hint of uncertainty in her declaration, and then deferring estimates each time coming closer to rectifying the implausibility.” The IJ also found that Ms. Munyuh had failed to explain “the implausibility that she was raped near Bamenda and was rescued by her husband within two hours given that at the time she escaped she would have been six to seven hours by vehicle from Yaoundé based on her initial estimation.”
But these time estimates are all consistent with each other. Indeed, assuming the truck really had traveled for four to five hours, Ms. Munyuh had no other choice but to give those answers. The IJ asked her if the truck had traveled more or less than an hour, to which Ms. Munyuh said more than an hour. Then the IJ asked whether the truck had traveled at least two hours, to which Ms. Munyuh answered in the affirmative.
No reasonable factfinder could find those two statements to conflict with Ms. Munyuh’s later testimony that the truck traveled for four to five hours. The IJ’s contrary finding is therefore unsupported by substantial evidence.
For its part, the Board agreed that, “[a]side from any other inconsistences [sic], . . . the discrepancies in the distances, locations, and times involved in the respondent’s claim of her assault and escape are not minor or trivial, and go to the heart of her claim.” The Board concluded that she had “not provided a reasonable explanation for these material discrepancies underlying her claim.”
We disagree. Ms. Munyuh set forth a reasonable and plausible explanation for the discrepancy between the four-to-five-kilometer estimate in her written declaration and the timeline of her account—namely, that she had been “brutally attacked, beaten multiple times, [and] raped within a span of less than about 24 hours.” It is reasonable and plausible that the trauma caused by multiple physical and sexual assaults would impair Ms. Munyuh’s focus at the time on peripheral matters and therefore on her memory of those matters. We have recognized more than once that “[s]exual abuse commonly results in ‘severe and long-lasting’ effects, including ‘avoidance of situations that trigger memories of the violation, profound feelings of shame, [and] difficulty remembering events.’” Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 850 F.3d 1051, 1070–71 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (second alteration in original) (emphasis added) (quoting Lopez-Galarza v. INS, 99 F.3d 954, 962 (9th Cir. 1996) (quoting Shana Swiss & Joan E. Giller, Rape as a Crime of War: A Medical Perspective, 270 J. Am. Med. Ass’n 612, 614 (1993))).
Although the IJ argued that Ms. Munyuh had not expressed uncertainty in her estimates until the government highlighted the distance inconsistency in cross-examination, that reasoning is not a cogent refutation of Ms. Munyuh’s explanation. It does not address that a sexual-assault victim might have an honest yet mistaken belief about the timeline surrounding the assault. In this case, assuming that Ms. Munyuh was telling the truth about being beaten and sexually assaulted, it is certainly plausible that she was not focused in the interim on the distance she was traveling and therefore did not form a recoverable direct memory of that distance, even as a ballpark figure. In attempting to recall
We do not understand the IJ’s finding that Ms. Munyuh’s testimony “is in conflict with itself” because she said she did not stop to rest. We find nowhere in the record that Ms. Munyuh testified that she stopped, so we do not see how her testimony is self-contradictory.
And there is no timeline discrepancy between “the whole night” and “two to three hours.” Assuming that Ms. Munyuh’s testimony that the truck left Bamenda around 9:00 p.m. and that it traveled four to five hours before breaking down is correct, it would have been about 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. when the truck broke down. And sunrise in Bafia that day was at 6:09 a.m. See Nat’l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., ESRL Global Monitoring Laboratory, https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc (last visited July 27, 2021) (enter “4.7078283” for latitude and “11.25” for longitude, and set the date to July 8, 2018). When Ms. Munyuh escaped, “the whole night” remaining was quite literally about “two to three hours.”
The last timeline inconsistency identified by the IJ, that it did not make sense that it would have taken Ms. Munyuh’s husband two hours to reach Bafia because Bafia was “a village within Yaoundé,” is unsupported by substantial evidence. Ms. Munyuh testified only that Bafia is “a village in Yaoundé already, the outskirt of where my husband lives in Yaoundé.” There is no other record evidence about Bafia’s distance from Yaoundé from which the IJ could conclude that the timeline was off. Looking at a map, we can see that Bafia is about 130 kilometers (about 81 miles) from
But even if Bafia had been closer, as the IJ believed, there could have been any number of reasons why Ms. Munyuh’s husband might have taken two hours to reach the village—car trouble, a police blockade, etc. The IJ never asked for an explanation, and she was required to. Soto-Olarte, 555 F.3d at 1092 (An IJ “must provide a petitioner with a reasonable opportunity to offer an explanation of any perceived inconsistencies that form the basis of a denial of asylum.” (quoting Don v. Gonzales, 476 F.3d 738, 741 (9th Cir. 2007))). Had she done so, perhaps Ms. Munyuh could have clarified what she meant by “outskirt” of Yaoundé, resolving this discrepancy at the hearing.
2. Other Inconsistencies
As noted above, the Board did not rely on any other purported inconsistencies that the IJ identified. It expressly disavowed two of them, and correctly so. No one can be reasonably expected to have the same emotional state every time she recounts a traumatic event in her life, especially on two different occasions, months apart and under different circumstances. And it is unreasonable to believe that Ms. Munyuh deliberately waited until after the IJ asked her about her injuries several times, only to reveal belatedly that she had experienced bleeding. Rather, Ms. Munyuh’s explanation, that had she understood her answer about the swelling in her genital region to encompass bleeding in that area, makes sense, especially given that English is not her native language. (Indeed, there are multiple instances in the record where it is apparent that she either misuses certain words or at least uses them in differently than an American English-speaker would.)
The Board relied only on the time and distance discrepancies discussed earlier to affirm the IJ. Other than disavowing the two findings discussed in the previous section of this opinion, it did not rule on any other alleged inconsistencies. The Board may revisit those on remand.
Ms. Munyuh also challenges the IJ’s decision to discount her documentation. We agree with her—the IJ committed legal error by discounting them without giving her an opportunity to provide corroborative evidence.
Unlike in many immigration cases we see, the affidavits Ms. Munyuh filed were of high quality. They are signed, notarized, and in English. The affidavits bear the affiants’ Cameroonian national identity card numbers as well as their cities of residence. And the affidavits do not give boilerplate, uniform accounts—they contain different information, consistent with what each affiant would likely know, and all of which together confirm the general contours of Ms. Munyuh’s account. Yet the IJ discounted these documents because Ms. Munyuh did not present the affiants’ ID cards, because the affiants were not subject to cross-examination, and because the attorney who notarized the documents was Ms. Munyuh’s cousin and therefore an “interested party.”
But the IJ did not ask Ms. Munyuh for the affiants’ ID cards until the hearing started, and she never asked her to produce the affiants to testify and be cross-examined. The affiants provided their national ID card numbers and the dates and locations the cards were issued in their declarations. (From the record, it seems as though the IJ wanted original ID cards, though the affiants would reasonably want to keep their original ID cards in Cameroon.) Ms. Munyuh’s attorney represented that he could have gotten copies of the ID cards if he had known to ask for them, and he noted on the record that he had only recently received the documents. The IJ therefore erred by failing to give Ms. Munyuh adequate notice that she was required to present such corroborative evidence and the
We also note that, given the opportunity to present additional evidence, Ms. Munyuh may also be able to quell the IJ’s fears about the medical report’s chain of custody—for example, if her husband testifies or provides a supplementary affidavit. And the IJ’s concern that the notary was Ms. Munyuh’s cousin went only to whether the attorney-notary-cousin would have sufficiently verified the affiants’ identities. (Of course, that does not make sense for the affiants who were also part of Ms. Munyuh’s family.) But we think that concern could have been resolved had Ms. Munyuh been allowed to verify those identities by other means.
As for the IJ’s concerns about a “strange blue square” around the medical report’s letterhead seal, we note that this square does not appear in the copies of the certified administrative record that we received. And there were no other indications that the document was falsified—in fact, the IJ expressly noted during the hearing that “it does appear to have an original stamp and an original signature” and declined to find the document to be falsified. Substantial evidence does not support discounting the medical report’s weight based solely on a printing artifact in its letterhead.
The IJ’s error in discounting these documents is also relevant to the ultimate determination of Ms. Munyuh’s credibility. An IJ must consider “other record evidence that sheds light on whether there is in fact an inconsistency” in a petitioner’s explanation. Shrestha, 590 F.3d at 1044. Here, Ms. Munyuh’s neighbor corroborates her testimony that she was beaten by the military men who came to arrest her on the morning of July 7, 2018. Her husband corroborates her
III. Conclusion
Ms. Munyuh’s case concerns us. From our reading of the record, the IJ seemed determined to pick every nit she could find. Besides erring procedurally, the IJ discounted probative evidence on flimsy grounds and displayed a dubious understanding of how rape survivors ought to act. Although we give great deference to the IJ as factfinder, substantial-evidence review does not require us to credit the credibility finding of an IJ who cherry-picks from—or misconstrues—the record to reach it. The IJ must consider the “totality of the circumstances, and all relevant factors.”
At the very least, the two legal errors we have identified warrant remand. The IJ erred by failing to give specific, cogent reasons for rejecting Ms. Munyuh’s reasonable, plausible explanations for the discrepancies tied to her declaration that the police truck broke down after only four or five kilometers. And she further erred by discounting the supporting documentation without giving Ms. Munyuh adequate notice and opportunity to provide corroborative evidence. We therefore vacate the removal order and remand
PETITION GRANTED; VACATED and REMANDED.
Notes
The respondent then testified that she did not rest or sleep at all during the time that she traveled to the phone booth and that she had run or walked for two to three hours during that time. This very testimony is in conflict with itself in that she testified that she did not stop or rest but also that she traveled walking or running only for two to three hours of that time. Additionally, it conflicts with remaining testimony in that the respondent indicated that this estimate of time during which she was walking or running, she had reached prior to her merits hearing. The court then asked if she had reached this estimate prior to the merits hearing why her declaration indicated that she ran the whole night? The court also noted that her testimony to the asylum officer had been similar in nature in that she had claimed to the asylum officer that she had to “find her way through all night”