Wang v. Gonzales
Wang v. Gonzales
Opinion of the Court
MEMORANDUM
1. Wang gave materially inconsistent accounts concerning his requests for asylum and withholding of removal based
2. Petitioner did not exhaust his claim that the immigration judge erred in finding petitioner’s asylum application to be frivolous. Petitioner’s brief to the Board of Immigration Appeals mentioned the issue only in a single sentence in the conclusion, without providing any authority or argumentation. We therefore lack jurisdiction to consider the claim. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(d)(1).
DENIED.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Wang did not, as the majority suggests, give “materially inconsistent accounts” of his wife’s alleged forced sterilization. The majority states that Wang provided inconsistent descriptions of the date on which his wife was sterilized and that this perceived inconsistency supports the IJ’s adverse credibility finding. I cannot agree. First, there is no clear discrepancy between Wang’s 2001 asylum declaration and his in-court testimony regarding the date of his wife’s forced sterilization. Wang’s declaration does not provide a date of this sterilization. Second, even if Wang’s testimony had been inconsistent on this point, we have repeatedly held that minor discrepancies in dates cannot support an adverse credibility finding. See Bandari v. INS, 227 F.3d 1160, 1166 (9th Cir. 2000); Martinez-Sanchez v. INS, 794 F.2d 1396, 1400 (9th Cir. 1986).
The majority also states that Wang’s 2001 declaration and his in-court testimony differ regarding whether he accompanied his wife home from the hospital after the birth of their second child and that the IJ provided Wang a sufficient opportunity to explain this perceived inconsistency. I disagree. While the IJ asked Wang to explain this inconsistency, she asked a compound question and failed to follow-up when Wang only answered the portion of her question regarding when his wife left the hospital. This does not amount to a “reasonable opportunity” to explain the perceived inconsistency as required by our case law. See Chen v. Ashcroft, 362 F.3d 611, 618 (9th Cir. 2004). Finally, a likely explanation for any inconsistency on this matter is poor translation. Wang’s declaration was translated from Chinese and is riddled with grammatical errors due to obvious interpretation problems. We have “long recognized that difficulties in interpretation may result in seeming inconsistencies.” Manimbao v. Ashcroft, 329 F.3d 655, 662 (9th Cir. 2003). For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the IJ’s adverse credibility finding and remand for further proceedings. Therefore, I dissent.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.