NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JUL 18 2023 FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS SAINAN LIU, No. 20-70457 Petitioner, Agency No. A205-776-136 v. MEMORANDUM* MERRICK B. GARLAND, Attorney General, Respondent. On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals Argued and Submitted February 16, 2023 Honolulu, Hawaii Before: BEA, COLLINS, and LEE, Circuit Judges. Memorandum joined by Judge BEA and Judge COLLINS; Partial Concurrence and Dissent by Judge LEE Petitioner Sainan Liu, a citizen of China, petitions for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirming a decision of the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denying her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“Torture Convention”). We have jurisdiction under § 242 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. § 1252, and § 2242(d) of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1231 note. See Nasrallah v. Barr, 140 S. Ct. 1683, 1690–91 (2020). We grant in part and deny in part the petition for review. 1. In upholding the IJ’s finding that Liu was not credible, the BIA held that the IJ did not clearly err in concluding that several aspects of Liu’s testimony were implausible. Specifically, the agency concluded that Liu implausibly testified that her parents hired a tutor for her “at a rate of between one-half and two-thirds of her father’s salary” and then, on top of that “extraordinary expense,” they also paid substantial sums towards her travel. Moreover, the agency found that it was hard to square this claimed extraordinary financial effort with Liu’s testimony about her parents’ lack of interest in her activities or in a major life event such as her baptism (which they did not attend), as well as her parents’ initial lack of effort, over several years, to provide her with supporting documents. Although we might not have drawn the same inferences, the agency’s reading of the record was permissible. We review an adverse credibility determination for substantial evidence, see Mukulumbutu v. Barr, 977 F.3d 924, 925 (9th Cir. 2020), and we cannot say that the record compels a conclusion contrary to the agency’s. See 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B). The agency also permissibly concluded that Liu’s documentary evidence was insufficient to rehabilitate her credibility or to independently establish her 2 claim of past persecution. The agency noted that one document Liu supplied, a “household registration,” contained “glaring” mistakes that undermined its reliability. The agency also found that the circumstances leading up to her production of medical records—Liu claimed her mother “unexpectedly” found them among “old textbooks” shortly before Liu’s final merits hearing in immigration court—cast doubt on their reliability. The agency also faulted Liu for the lack of any corroborating documents to support Liu’s claim that she was expelled from school. The agency’s weighing of …
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