NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FILED FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT JUL 30 2018 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS RUILI YAO, No. 15-70923 Petitioner, Agency No. A205-748-542 v. MEMORANDUM* JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS III, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Submitted July 26, 2018** San Francisco, California Before: THOMAS, Chief Judge, and HAWKINS and McKEOWN, Circuit Judges. Ruili Yao, a native and citizen of China, petitions pro se for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s order affirming without opinion an immigration judge’s (“IJ’s”) decision denying her application for asylum, withholding of * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2). removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252. We review the agency’s factual findings for substantial evidence, applying the standards created by the REAL ID Act. Ren v. Holder, 648 F.3d 1079, 1084–85 (9th Cir. 2011). We grant the petition for review and remand. Substantial evidence does not support the IJ’s adverse credibility determination. Yao provided a reasonable explanation for her selection of a larger travel agency instead of her friend’s smaller agency: she plausibly believed that a bigger agency could provide greater security and a higher chance of success. The IJ’s belief that her friend’s agency would have been a better option is “pure speculation.” Ren, 648 F.3d at 1087 n.5. Yao was not inconsistent when she described the extent of her father’s involvement in her decision. First her father helped her look through newspaper advertisements; then Yao selected the agency, placed a phone call, and attended her first appointment alone; later she and her father went to the agency together to pay the fee. Yao was also not inconsistent when she testified that she told the agency she wished to come to the United States as a student, but that the agency presumed that she might seek asylum because Yao also informed the agency of her arrest. 2 It was not implausible for Yao to fail to include the details of her medical treatment in her application for asylum. Yao included a declaration describing the police officer beating and kicking her to the point of unconsciousness and corroborated her testimony regarding her treatment with hospital records, which the IJ did not discuss. Shrestha v. Holder, 590 F.3d 1034, 1040 (9th Cir. 2010) (noting “the requirement that an IJ not cherry pick solely facts favoring an adverse credibility determination while ignoring facts that undermine that result”). Substantial evidence does support the IJ’s determination that Yao’s answers to questions regarding her mother’s visits to the United States were not credible. Credibility determinations based on demeanor merit special deference. Singh-Kaur v. I.N.S., 183 F.3d 1147, 1151 (9th Cir. 1999). The IJ “specifically and cogently” described the ...
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