18-2257 Jian Liang v. Garland United States Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit August Term 2020 Argued: November 20, 2020 Decided: August 19, 2021 No. 18-2257 JIAN LIANG, AKA JIAN HUI LIANG, Petitioner, v. MERRICK B. GARLAND, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent. * Petition from the Board of Immigration Appeals, No. A202-152-185 Before: LIVINGSTON, Chief Judge, KEARSE, and SULLIVAN, Circuit Judges. Petitioner, a Chinese national who alleges that the Chinese government placed him on a national “blacklist” because of his Christian faith, challenges the denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the *Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 43(c)(2), Merrick B. Garland is automatically substituted for former Attorney General William P. Barr. Convention Against Torture following a determination by an immigration judge that he was not credible. Although Petitioner testified about the blacklist on direct examination at his asylum hearing, he did not explain how he knew that he was on that list. It was not until cross-examination that he stated, for the first time, that the Chinese police had divulged this information to his father in October 2014. Problematically, however, the letter submitted by Petitioner’s father to the agency did not mention a meeting with police officers in October 2014, let alone that the officers disclosed Petitioner’s inclusion on a national blacklist. As a result, the IJ concluded that Petitioner was attempting to bolster his application through false testimony and determined that Petitioner was not credible. The Bureau of Immigration Appeals affirmed. While a factual omission is ordinarily less probative of credibility than an inconsistency, the omission here concerned material information that Petitioner would be expected to have divulged earlier in the process. Petitioner’s alleged inclusion on this blacklist was the difference between him being the victim of a discrete instance of harassment at the hands of local police on the one hand and the target of a coordinated campaign by national officials to persecute Petitioner because of his religion on the other. How Petitioner knew that he was on that list, then, was critical to his application. As Petitioner failed to raise these facts earlier, and given that Petitioner’s father also omitted this information from his letter, we conclude that there was substantial evidence supporting the agency’s adverse credibility determination and deny the petition. DENIED. Richard Tarzia, Law Office of Richard Tarzia, Belle Mead, NJ, for Petitioner. Nancy N. Safavi, Trial Attorney, Office of Immigration Litigation, Ernesto H. Molina, Jr., Deputy Director, for Brian Boynton, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC., for Respondent. 2 RICHARD J. SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge: In Hong Fei Gao v. Sessions, we explained that in asylum cases, “in general[,] omissions are less probative of credibility than inconsistencies created by direct contradictions in evidence and testimony.” 891 F.3d 67, 78 (2d Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks omitted). We did not mean to suggest, of course, that an omission can never undermine an asylum applicant’s credibility. Far from it. For instance, an …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals