Gurwant Singh v. Holder

MEMORANDUM

Gurwant Singh, native and citizen of India, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s (“BIA”) dismissal of his appeal of the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), and the denial of his motion to reopen his removal proceedings to consider previously unavailable corroborative evidence. We deny the petitions.

I

In making the adverse credibility finding, Singh asserts that the IJ improperly relied on discrepancies between his statements made during his initial airport interview and his statements made during the removal proceedings. See, e.g., Joseph v. Holder, 600 F.3d 1235, 1243 (9th Cir.2010) (“We have rejected adverse credibility findings that relied on differences between statements a petitioner made during removal proceedings and those made during less formal, routinely unrecorded proceedings.”). Under the REAL ID Act of 2005, however, an IJ may require an applicant to produce corroborative evidence even in cases in which the IJ finds the applicant’s testimony credible. See Owino v. Holder, 575 F.3d 956, 959 (9th Cir.2009)…