Opinion
23-1533
06-13-2024
HARKEWAL SINGH, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
Submitted March 5, 2024 [*]
Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A205-934-930
Before DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge, JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge, JOSHUA p. KOLAR, Circuit Judge.
ORDER
Harkewal Singh, a thirty-five-year-old Indian citizen belonging to a minority political party, petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals upholding the denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture. Because substantial evidence supports the Board's decision, we deny his petition.
Singh's claim for asylum and associated relief arises from his involvement in the Shiromani Akali Dal Mann Party ("Mann Party"), a minority political party in India. Singh, who is from Dhilwan, a small town in the Kapurthala District of Punjab in northern India, became involved with the Mann Party in 2011 after his father became a prominent party member.
According to Singh's asylum application, members of an opposing political party, the Shiromani Akali Dal Badal Party ("Badal Party"), began targeting Singh soon after he became involved with the Mann Party. Singh asserts that members of the Badal Party would come to his family's home and try to encourage him and his father to join their party. When those efforts failed, Badal Party members began threatening his family through "more violent tactics." In late 2012, Singh was attacked by Badal Party members, who beat him with baseball bats, hockey sticks, and rods after he refused to join their party. In early 2013, Singh was travelling to college at nearby Khalsa College when he again was attacked by Badal Party members, who threatened him at gunpoint and beat him for supporting the Mann Party. After this attack, Singh was hospitalized for three days. He filed a report of both incidents with local police, who told him that "they could do nothing for [him]." Singh maintains that the police were controlled by the Badal Party.
After the second attack, Singh's family feared that he might be killed by Badal Party members, so he went to stay with his aunt 100 miles away in eastern Punjab. Singh's family then arranged for him to flee India for the United States. Singh left India in May 2013 and arrived the following month via a circuitous route (through seven countries) at the United States border in Nogales, Arizona.
Singh was immediately detained upon entering the United States at the southern border. An immigration officer interviewed him and determined that he had established a credible fear of persecution. The Department of Homeland Security released him on parole but promptly initiated removal proceedings, charging him with entering the United States without a valid entry document. See 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I). Singh later conceded that he was removable as charged.
In May 2014, Singh applied for asylum and withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158, as well as protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c). Singh asserted that he had been harmed based on his political opinion and involvement with the Mann Party. In support, Singh submitted his own declaration; a letter from a Mann Party district president; a medical letter documenting his hospitalization in February 2013; separate police reports from the two attacks; the 2017 U.S. Department of State Human Rights Report for India; and a 2018 map that identified the ruling party in each Indian state.
After a hearing, an immigration judge denied the requested relief. The IJ first determined that Singh was not credible based on numerous inconsistencies between his hearing testimony and other parts of his application. The IJ identified discrepancies over (1) whether Singh was a member or merely a supporter of the Mann Party; (2) the Mann Party's political goals; (3) details about the February 2013 attack; (4) whether the Badal Party controlled Singh's district at the time of the attacks; and (5) Singh's reasons for departing India. As the IJ saw it, Singh failed to satisfactorily explain these inconsistencies despite being given ample opportunities to do so. The IJ added that, even if Singh's testimony were credible, he failed to provide evidence that corroborated his testimony. For example, Singh submitted nothing to confirm that he was a Mann Party member or a Khalsa College student. The IJ also doubted the authenticity of the police reports for the two attacks because the reports were identically worded and written in English, not Punjabi. She additionally found it suspicious that not one family member had written a letter in support of Singh's application.
The Board upheld the IJ's determinations. With regard to the IJ's adverse credibility finding, the Board discerned no clear error, highlighting three discrepancies in Singh's testimony: (1) whether he was a member or a supporter of the Mann Party; (2) the college he attended and was travelling to at the time of the February 2013 attack; and (3) whether the Badal Party controlled Singh's district at the time of the events that led him to leave India. The Board also agreed that Singh's documentary evidence did not rehabilitate his inconsistent testimony or independently satisfy his burden of proof.
In his petition for review, Singh argues that substantial evidence does not support the IJ's adverse credibility finding. Because the Board agreed with the IJ's decision but supplemented it with its own analysis, we review both the underlying decision and the Board's additional reasoning. Cui v. Garland, 71 F.4th 592, 599 (7th Cir. 2023). We deferentially review the IJ's findings "so long as they are supported by substantial evidence." Id. at 600. Under this highly deferential standard of review, we will disturb an IJ's adverse credibility finding "only in extraordinary circumstances." Dai v. Garland, 24 F.4th 628, 635 (7th Cir. 2022) (citations omitted).
We begin with Singh's challenges to each of the three inconsistencies raised by the Board. Singh first tries to discount as "trivial" the finding that he testified inconsistently about his involvement with the Mann Party at his credible-fear interview (at which he identified himself as a supporter, not a member); in his declaration in support of his application (where he described himself as a member and supporter); and at his hearing (where he described himself simply as a member).
Nothing in this record compels us to disturb the IJ's finding. Singh's case is governed by the REAL ID Act, so the IJ was entitled to base an adverse credibility finding on any inconsistencies or falsehoods in Singh's testimony, without regard to whether such inconsistencies or falsehoods go to the heart of his claim. See Dai, 24 F.4th at 635 (citing 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii)). In any event, the IJ reasonably found these inconsistencies to be material, given that Singh based his claim on political persecution. The IJ understandably rejected Singh's explanation that nervousness led him to misspeak at his credible-fear interview, at which he otherwise was able to cogently explain the difference between supporters and members.
Singh also challenges the finding that he testified inconsistently about the college he was attending when he was attacked in February 2013. The IJ again drew negative inferences from his "varying" accounts: at his credible-fear interview, he said he was attacked while attending college at Nawab Jassa Singh Ahluwalia (NJSA), but in his asylum application and at his hearing he testified that the attack occurred while attending Khalsa College. Singh maintains that the alleged discrepancy has been taken out of context.
Singh's argument has some merit. He consistently reported that he attended NJSA from 2010-11 and Khalsa College from 2011-13. And, as Singh points out, he never expressly stated at his credible-fear interview that he was attacked while attending NJSA:
Q. Were you always with your father when you were attacked by [Badal Party members]?
A. No, one time I was alone. And when I was going to college, they pulled me out of the bus and beat me up.
Q. You attended college in India?
A. Yes.
Q. Which college did you attend?
A. NJSA....Nawab Jassa Singh Ahluwalia.
Q. Did you finish that school?
A. No. I dropped out I could not write my exams.
Nevertheless, the passage could arguably support the IJ's interpretation as well, and we do not overturn such a finding "simply because the evidence might support an alternate finding." Dai, 24 F.4th at 635-36 (citing Tawuo v. Lynch, 799 F.3d 725, 728 (7th Cir. 2015)).
Singh next disputes the finding that he testified inconsistently about the Badal Party's political control of Kapurthala at the time of the attacks. At the hearing, he initially testified that the Badal Party controlled Punjab, including his district of Kapurthala. But after the government submitted evidence that a Congress Party member was elected in the district in 2012, Singh acknowledged as much. Singh argues that he cleared up this inconsistency by explaining that another political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was "in cahoots" with the Badal Party-a relationship that (according to Singh) supports an inference that the latter "retains some control in Kapurthala[.]"
Singh suggests that the BJP and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, controlled India's government when the relevant events occurred from 2011-2013, but India's prime minister at that time was Manmohan Singh, a member of the Congress Party and not the BJP.
The IJ's determination that Singh testified inconsistently about which party controlled his district finds substantial support in the record. Singh was unable to account for his misstatements regarding the Badal Party's influence, and an explanation for inconsistent testimony that is either nonresponsive or contradictory-like the one Singh provided here-further supports an IJ's finding of inconsistency. See Dai, 24 F.4th at 635.
In sum, we conclude that substantial evidence supported the IJ's adverse credibility finding.
We next turn to Singh's challenge to the IJ's finding that the evidence Singh submitted did not corroborate (or rehabilitate) his testimony. An IJ may require corroborative evidence even from a credible applicant "unless the applicant does not have the evidence and cannot reasonably obtain the evidence." 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii). Here, the IJ explained that even if she had found Singh to be generally credible, he failed to adequately corroborate his claims about his membership in the Mann Party and enrollment at Khalsa College.
On appeal, Singh asserts that he lost his membership card while travelling through Guatemala to the United States; that the IJ ignored a letter he had provided from the Mann Party's district president confirming his membership in the party; that Khalsa College deleted his name from the roll of students after he stopped attending; and that the IJ did not give sufficient weight to the English-language police reports.
The problem is that the materials Singh submitted do not explain the inconsistencies in his testimony. For instance, the letter from the Mann Party district president says only that Singh will face persecution from the Congress Party if he returns to India; it never mentions the Badal Party. And even if the IJ had given greater weight to the police reports, neither report addresses the material inconsistencies the IJ identified in Singh's testimony.
The petition for review is denied.
[*]We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. Fed. R. App. p. 34(a)(2)(C).