Harpal Singh Rajwinder Kaur v. Immigration and Naturalization Service

ORDER

In this appeal from denial by the Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board) of petitioners’ requests for asylum, withholding of deportation, and withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Board states that its decision “is based solely on the non-classified evidence of record.” The Board also states, “We adopt and incorporate the Immigration Judge’s factual findings found in her written decision from pages 1 through 43.” The Immigration Judge in that decision states that she “has employed reasonable factual inferences from the classified evidence.” She also speaks of giving “appropriate weight” to the classified evidence. Three times in her unclassified decision, the judge refers to her classified decision for analysis of the credibility of one or other of the petitioners.

We have been supplied neither with the classified information nor the Immigration Judge’s unexpurgated classified opinion. We have been supplied with 30 pages of the classified opinion, in which the classified evidence is characterized by the Immigration Judge as “layer upon layer of hearsay,” but nonetheless…