Thangaraja

MEMORANDUM **

Saluja Thangaraja, a native and citizen of Sri Lanka, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ summary affirmance of an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We grant the petition for review in part, and remand for further proceedings.

While “we accord substantial deference to an IJ’s credibility finding, ... [w]hen the IJ provides specific reasons for the questioning of a witness’s credibility, this court may evaluate those reasons to determine whether they are valid grounds upon which to base a finding that the applicant is not credible.” Mendoza Manimbao v. Ashcroft, 329 F.3d 655, 658 (9th Cir.2003) (quotation marks and citation omitted). We conclude that the IJ’s adverse credibility finding regarding Thangaraja is not supported by substantial evidence. See Lata v. INS, 204 F.3d 1241, 1245 (9th Cir.2000).

First, the IJ made a demeanor-based finding that Thangaraja, “in attempting to answer certain questions, had to look up to the ceiling as if she was trying to remember the right words, or the right script, or right explanation, or…