Minhas

MEMORANDUM *

Manbinder Singh Minhas, a native and citizen of India, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) order summarily affirming the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) denial of his application for asylum and withholding of removal. We have jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252 . We review for substantial evidence the agency’s findings of adverse credibility, Chen v. Ashcroft, 362 F.3d 611, 617 (9th Cir.2004), and changed country conditions, Lopez v. Ashcroft, 366 F.3d 799, 805 (9th Cir.2004).

The IJ’s adverse credibility determination was not supported by substantial evidence. The IJ’s conclusion that Minhas’s testimony was implausible was a matter of conjecture, see Abovian v. INS, 219 F.3d 972, 979 (9th Cir.2000), amended by 228 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir.2000), and the IJ did not identify any material inconsistencies upon which he based the adverse credibility finding. See Garrovillas v. INS, 156 F.3d 1010, 1014 (9th Cir.1998). The alternative finding by the IJ that the government established changed country conditions in India since 1997 and forward was not supported by an individualized analysis *50 of how these changed conditions affected Minhas’s situation.…

separately concurring.

I concur in the result vacating the IJ’s adverse credibility determination, granting the petition for review, and remanding to the BIA for it to conduct a proper changed country conditions analysis under Lopez v. Ashcroft, 366 F.3d 799, 807 (9th Cir.2004). I separately concur, however, because I conclude the inconsistencies the IJ identified in petitioner’s application and later supplemental declaration {e.g., the arrest of petitioner’s father and the claim of discrimination against Sikhs at the Bombay college) were material and went to the heart of petitioner’s asylum claim (and thus generally would be sufficient to support an adverse credibility determination). Nevertheless, the IJ failed to provide petitioner a reasonable opportunity to explain either inconsistency. See Chen v. Ashcroft, 362 F.3d 611, 618 (9th Cir.2004) (holding that the IJ “must provide a petitioner with a reasonable opportunity to offer an explanation of any perceived inconsistencies that form the basis of a denial of asylum.”). Neither the IJ nor the government attorney questioned petitioner regarding the inconsistencies, and the inconsistencies thus cannot support the adverse…