MIRABEL E. MUNYUH, AKA Mirabel Endam Munyuh v. MERRICK B. GARLAND , Attorney General

FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
M IRABEL E. M UNYUH, AKA Mirabel
Endam Munyuh,
Petitioner,
v.
M ERRICK B. GARLAND , Attorney
General,
Respondent.
No. 19-72890
Agency No.
A215-821-395
OPINION
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Argued and Submitted May 3, 2021
Seattle, Washington
Filed August 25, 2021
Before: Danny J. Boggs,* A. Wallace Tashima, and
Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Boggs
* The Honorable Danny J. Boggs, Senior Circuit Judge of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.

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SUMMARY**
Immigration
The panel granted Mirabel Munyuh’s petition for review
of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals denying
asylum and related relief on adverse credibility grounds,
vacated the order of removal, and remanded for further
proceedings.
The panel held that the immigration judge erred by
failing to give specific, cogent reasons for rejecting
Munyuh’s reasonable, plausible explanations for the
discrepancies tied to her declaration concerning the distance
she traveled in a police truck before escaping on foot after
officers raped her and being rescued by her husband. The
panel held that the IJ further erred by discounting Munyuh’s
supporting documentation without giving her adequate
notice and opportunity to provide corroborative evidence.
The panel wrote that from its reading of the record, the
IJ seemed determined to pick every nit she could find.
Besides erring procedurally, the IJ discounted probative
evidence on flimsy grounds and displayed a dubious
understanding of how rape survivors ought to act. The panel
explained that although it gives great deference to the IJ as
factfinder, substantial-evidence review does not require it to
credit the credibility finding of an IJ who cherry-picks
from—or misconstrues—the record to reach it. Rather, the
IJ must consider the totality of the circumstances, and all
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It
has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 3
relevant factors. The panel therefore vacated the removal
order and remanded the case to the Board for further
proceedings consistent with its opinion.
COUNSEL
Ronald D. Richey (argued), Law Office of Ronald D.
Richey, Rockville, Maryland, for Petitioner.
Rachel P. Berman-Vaporis (argued), Trial Attorney; Mary
Jane Candaux, Assistant Director; Office of Immigration
Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of
Justice, Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.
OPINION
BOGGS, Circuit Judge:
Mirabel Munyuh, a Cameroonian national, petitions for
review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the
Board). After removal proceedings, an immigration judge
(IJ) denied Ms. Munyuh’s application for asylum,
withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention
Against Torture, and the Board dismissed Ms. Munyuh’s
appeal of that denial. Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C.
§ 1252(a)(1), we grant the petition for review, vacate the
order of removal, and remand for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.

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I. Factual and Procedural History
A. Background
Cameroon is a sub-Saharan African republic dominated
by a strong presidency. The current president, Paul Biya, has
been in power since 1982. In 2016, a sociopolitical crisis
began in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of
Cameroon. Those regions were formerly British mandates;
the rest of the country became a French colony after World
War I. Thus, these two regions are predominately Protestant
and English-speaking, and the rest of Cameroon is
predominately Catholic and French-speaking (although
Biya’s government is officially secular).
Violence has broken out between separatist groups in the
anglophone regions and Cameroonian security forces. Both
the separatists and the state’s security forces have engaged
in human-rights violations, including unlawful and arbitrary
killings, torture, forced disappearances, prolonged detention
in harsh, life-threatening prison conditions, interference with
privacy rights, use of child soldiers, and violence against
women.
Ms. Munyuh is a Protestant and anglophone, although
Moghamo, not English, is her mother tongue. Before the
incident leading to Ms. Munyuh’s flight, she lived in Santa,
a small township about 23 kilometers (14 miles) south of
Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest Region. She taught
physical education there, and, although not a marathon
runner, she remained physically active, running for about an
hour at a time three days per week.
She is married and has one child, a 14-year-old son. Both
her husband and son are still living in Cameroon.
Ms. Munyuh’s husband lived separately from her and

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 5
worked in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Yaoundé is
about 372 kilometers (231 miles) southeast of Bamenda; the
most direct route between the two cities passes through
Santa.
B. Ms. Munyuh’s Account
Ms. Munyuh gave a harrowing account of her treatment
by Cameroonian police in July 2018. According to her, the
morning after an old friend from primary school stayed at
Ms. Munyuh’s house, officers forced open her front door,
ransacked her home, and took her into custody.
Ms. Munyuh’s friend was suspected of being a member of
the SCNC, an anglophone separatist group, and the officers
accused Ms. Munyuh of being a member too.
The officers threw Ms. Munyuh to the ground and kicked
and slapped her, causing swelling on her face and legs. After
this beating, the officers took her to a detention facility in the
city of Bamenda and put her into a cell with about thirty
others. Ms. Munyuh did not know any of the other people in
the cell, nor did she know why they had been detained. The
police did not give her food or water, did not let her
communicate with her family or attorney, and continued
beating her. She remained in the cell for 15 or 16 hours.
That night, about ten officers loaded Ms. Munyuh onto a
truck with the other detainees from her cell; they were all to
be taken to the central prison in Yaoundé, capital of
Cameroon. At some point along the way—the actual time
and distance being a point of dispute in this case—the truck
broke down. While the truck was stopped, officers took the
women out of the truck and into the bush to sexually assault
them. Two officers raped Ms. Munyuh. After the second
officer raped Ms. Munyuh, he did not stay close to her.
Before she could be raped by a third officer, she gathered her

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strength and managed to escape into the surrounding
wilderness by sneaking away in the darkness and then
running as fast as she could.
Traveling by foot until daybreak, Ms. Munyuh
eventually reached a phone booth in the town of Bafia, in the
central region of Cameroon. She learned the name of the
town from the owner of the phone booth and called her
husband, who was in Yaoundé, to tell him what had
happened and where she was. He told her to continue to hide
in the bush while he drove to Bafia, about two hours away
from Yaoundé. He picked up Ms. Munyuh and then drove
her to a hospital back in Yaoundé. Ms. Munyuh was
examined by a doctor, who determined that her condition
warranted hospital admission. Ms. Munyuh provided the IJ
with a copy of her medical report, detailing bruises and
tenderness across her head, chest, back, and feet, and
swelling and lacerations of her genitals supporting a
conclusion of forceful vaginal penetration. Afraid that the
police would find her if she stayed at the hospital,
Ms. Munyuh declined to be admitted, and the doctor instead
assigned two nurses to provide follow-up care at her
husband’s residence.
The police continued to search for Ms. Munyuh after her
escape. A court summons and an arrest warrant were issued
for her, and her father was jailed for three days until he
promised to help police find her. She provided the IJ with a
copy of the arrest warrant, which identifies her as “suspected
of being a member of the [SCNC],” and an affidavit from
her father, who describes the harassment he suffered from
the police “on the premise that [he] was intentionally
refusing to disclose Mirabel’s whereabouts.”
Ms. Munyuh fled the country by bus to Ghana by way of
Nigeria. She flew to Ecuador, and from there worked her

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 7
way north to the United States. Three months after leaving
Cameroon, she entered the United States at San Ysidro,
California. Lacking any valid entry documents, she was
detained near San Diego.
C. Removal Proceedings
Shortly after her entry into the United States, an asylum
officer determined that Ms. Munyuh had a credible fear of
returning to Cameroon. After receiving a notice to appear for
removal proceedings, Ms. Munyuh obtained counsel and
applied for asylum and withholding of removal on the
ground of imputed political opinion. The members of her
family remaining in Cameroon gathered and sent her
supporting documentation for her asylum application. Along
with her medical report, arrest warrant, and father’s
affidavit, those documents also included affidavits from her
husband, her neighbor, her employer, and her attorney (who
was the notary for the other four affidavits) and copies of
official Cameroonian records, including her marriage
certificate, verification of employment, and letters from her
employer documenting her absence from work. The IJ
admitted those documents at the removal proceedings.
Ms. Munyuh was the sole witness at her removal
hearing. On direct examination, she testified to the account
above. On cross-examination, the government questioned
Ms. Munyuh’s timeline of events. Specifically, Ms. Munyuh
testified that from Bamenda to Yaoundé is around a six- or
seven-hour drive, but her written declaration attached to her
asylum application had stated that the truck broke down after
only four or five kilometers. If that were the case, then it
would have been impossible for Ms. Munyuh to have
traveled on foot the remaining distance to Bafia, hundreds of
kilometers away, by sunrise. Ms. Munyuh responded that
she had only estimated the distance the truck had traveled,

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and her attorney argued that, because she had gone through
a horrific day of beatings and sexual assault, it was to be
expected that Ms. Munyuh had not focused at the time on the
actual distance traveled.
The government questioned Ms. Munyuh about another
discrepancy. During her credible-fear interview, she had
testified that she did not know whether her primary-school
friend was a member of SCNC, but during the removal
hearing, she testified that she knew that her friend was a
member. Ms. Munyuh explained that she gave that answer
during her asylum interview because she was afraid.
After the government’s cross-examination, the IJ
continued to press Ms. Munyuh on her timeline discrepancy.
Ms. Munyuh responded affirmatively to questions about
whether the truck had traveled longer than an hour and
longer than two hours before it broke down. When
challenged on the discrepancy between her declaration’s
statement that the truck had gone only a few kilometers and
her testimony that the truck had traveled at least two hours,
Ms. Munyuh responded that she did not know how far a
kilometer is. After a recess, Ms. Munyuh ultimately testified
on redirect that the truck had gone about four or five hours
before breaking down.
The IJ also questioned Ms. Munyuh on several other
issues. After testimony that she had traveled on foot about
two or three hours before she reached the phone booth, the
IJ confronted her again with her asylum declaration, in
which Ms. Munyuh had stated that she had run “the whole
night.” When asked why her estimate at the hearing was
different from her estimate in the declaration, Ms. Munyuh
gave no answer. The IJ also noted a discrepancy in
Ms. Munyuh’s testimony about her father’s arrest (her
testimony put his arrest one day earlier than the timeline in

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 9
his affidavit suggested) and Ms. Munyuh’s testimony that
her father had been shown an arrest warrant in evidence (the
document in evidence had been issued the month after her
father was arrested).
The IJ asked what injuries Ms. Munyuh had sustained
between her arrest and escape. Ms. Munyuh had earlier
testified to bruising on her back, sides, feet, and face. When
asked if there were additional injuries, Ms. Munyuh added
that she had a swollen vulva. The IJ asked again if there had
been anything else, to which Ms. Munyuh answered no. The
IJ then asked if there had been any bleeding, to which
Ms. Munyuh responded affirmatively, indicating vaginal
bleeding. The IJ then asked why Ms. Munyuh had not
testified to the bleeding earlier, to which she had no answer.
Finally, the IJ noted that Ms. Munyuh had not shown
“any emotion particularly” during her testimony about the
rape. Asked why, Ms. Munyuh did not directly answer but
explained: “it’s not because I don’t . . . I don’t feel that I was
being raped. I do feel it, your honor.” The IJ then contrasted
Ms. Munyuh’s affect at the hearing with her emotions during
the credible-fear interview, in which she had cried. Asked
“why [she had been] able to express those emotions during
the asylum officer interview” but not the hearing,
Ms. Munyuh simply replied, “I don’t know, your honor.”
Based on the above discrepancies, the IJ made an adverse
credibility determination. She also cited two additional
discrepancies that she had not asked Ms. Munyuh to explain
during the hearing. First, Ms. Munyuh had testified that
Bafia, where she had called her husband, was “a village
within Yaoundé,” but her husband nevertheless took two
hours to reach her. Second, Ms. Munyuh had given her initial
estimates of the police truck’s travel distance (in her asylum
declaration) and date of her father’s arrest (in testimony)

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“without any hint of uncertainty” and had not shown
uncertainty regarding those facts until confronted with the
discrepancies at the hearing.
The IJ also gave Ms. Munyuh’s documentary evidence
“minimal weight,” citing several factors. First, “no identity
documents were presented for any of the affiants,” “none of
the affiants were subject to cross-examination,” and one of
the affiants, who was the notary for the remaining affiants,
was also Ms. Munyuh’s attorney and cousin and therefore an
“interested party.” Second, Ms. Munyuh could not establish
a “foundation or chain of custody” for the medical report,
and the report had a “strange blue square around the
[letterhead] seal.” Third, the remaining documents were not
purported to be originals.
The IJ concluded that Ms. Munyuh had not met her
burden to prove persecution or torture. She therefore denied
her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and
protection under the Convention Against Torture.
D. Proceedings Before the Board
Ms. Munyuh appealed that decision to the Board, filing
a brief pro se. (The government did not submit a brief.) Her
brief addressed many of the inconsistencies raised by the IJ.
She continued to insist that her original distance estimate
was a mistake. She further stated that her silence or refusal
to provide additional estimates in response to the
government’s and IJ’s questions were because she feared
making another incorrect estimate, especially because she
could not remember the details with precision due to the
stress surrounding the events.
The Board dismissed Ms. Munyuh’s appeal. Reviewing
the IJ’s decision on findings of fact, including credibility

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 11
determinations, for clear error, the Board gave “little to no
weight to some of the inconsistences [sic]” that the IJ had
cited. Those inconsistencies included the difference in
Ms. Munyuh’s affect between her credible-fear interview
and the removal hearing and her failure to identify vaginal
bleeding as an injury she sustained before being asked
expressly by the IJ. Nevertheless, the Board held that there
were “significant material inconsistencies” between
Ms. Munyuh’s declaration in support of her asylum
application and her testimony—namely, “the locations,
distances, and times she related in her accounts of her assault
and escape”:
Even accepting the respondent’s
explanations for the inconsistencies
regarding her father’s arrest and her
knowledge of her friend’s political
affiliation, and her assertion that some of the
inconsistencies are due to her lack of
familiarity with her documents, her mental
state at the time of her asylum interview, and
the stress she felt when testifying, we find
that the significant inconsistencies in the
material aspects of her claim support an
adverse credibility determination in her
case. . . . Aside from any other inconsistences
[sic], we find that the discrepancies in the
distances, locations, and times involved in
the respondent’s claim of her assault and
escape are not minor or trivial, and go to the
heart of her claim. The respondent has not
provided a reasonable explanation for these
material discrepancies underlying her claim.
Ms. Munyuh’s timely petition for review followed.

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II. Analysis
A. Standard of Review
The REAL ID Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-13, div. B,
119 Stat. 231, 302, governs credibility determinations for
asylum applications filed on or after May 11, 2005. Id.
§ 101(h)(2), 119 Stat. at 305. The Act provides that:
Considering the totality of the circumstances,
and all relevant factors, a trier of fact may
base a credibility determination on the
demeanor, candor, or responsiveness of the
applicant or witness, the inherent plausibility
of the applicant’s or witness’s account, the
consistency between the applicant’s or
witness’s written and oral statements
(whenever made and whether or not under
oath, and considering the circumstances
under which the statements were made), the
internal consistency of each such statement,
the consistency of such statements with other
evidence of record . . . , and any inaccuracies
or falsehoods in such statements, without
regard to whether an inconsistency,
inaccuracy, or falsehood goes to the heart of
the applicant’s claim, or any other relevant
factor.
Id. § 101(a)(3) (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii)).
The same credibility-determination standard applies to
applications for other relief from removal filed on or after
May 11, 2005. Id. § 101(d)(2) (codified at 8 U.S.C.
§ 1230(c)(4)(C)).

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 13
We review adverse credibility determinations under the
substantial-evidence standard. Yali Wang v. Sessions,
861 F.3d 1003, 1007 (9th Cir. 2017). This standard is a
demanding one because factual findings by the agency—
which include credibility determinations—“are conclusive
unless [every] reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to
conclude to the contrary.” 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B);
Garland v. Ming Dai, 141 S. Ct. 1669, 1680 (2021) (noting
that we may disregard a BIA credibility finding only if “no
reasonable adjudicator could have reached” it). Thus, to
reverse, we “must find that the evidence not only supports [a
contrary] conclusion, but compels it.” Yali Wang, 861 F.3d
at 1007 (alteration in original) (quoting Rizk v. Holder,
629 F.3d 1083, 1087 (9th Cir. 2011)).
Even so, we have identified limits to the deference we
owe the agency. An IJ may not “cherry pick solely facts
favoring an adverse credibility determination while ignoring
facts that undermine that result.” Shrestha v. Holder,
590 F.3d 1034, 1040 (9th Cir. 2010). The credibility
determination must “be ‘reasonable’ and ‘take into
consideration the individual circumstances’ of the
applicant.” Id. at 1041 (quoting Lin v. Mukasey, 521 F.3d 22,
28 n.3 (1st Cir. 2008)). The factfinder must provide “more
than a vague reference to the ‘totality of the circumstances’
or recitation of naked conclusions that a petitioner’s
testimony was inconsistent or implausible, that the petitioner
was unresponsive, or that the petitioner’s demeanor
undermined the petitioner’s credibility.” Id. at 1042. Thus,
the agency “must provide a specific cogent reason for the
adverse credibility finding.” Ibid. (quoting Gui v. INS,
280 F.3d 1217, 1225 (9th Cir. 2002)). Although the REAL
ID Act removed our earlier threshold limitation on the types
of inconsistencies that may support an adverse credibility
determination, id. at 1043, the record must still reasonably

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support an adverse determination for us to uphold it. For
example, “an utterly trivial inconsistency, such as a
typographical error, will not by itself” be enough. Ibid.
Additionally, the Act’s requirement that inconsistencies
“be considered in light of the ‘totality of the circumstances,
and all relevant factors’” indicates that the agency has a duty
to consider a “petitioner’s explanation for a perceived
inconsistency and other record evidence that sheds light on
whether there is in fact an inconsistency at all.” Id. at 1043–
44 (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii)). If that
explanation is “reasonable and plausible,” then the agency
“must provide a specific and cogent reason for rejecting it.”
Rizk, 629 F.3d at 1088; see also Soto-Olarte v. Holder,
555 F.3d 1089, 1091 (“Because the BIA’s opinion does not
refer to the explanation that [petitioner] gave . . . and does
not give the BIA’s reasons for considering that explanation
unpersuasive, the BIA’s treatment of [petitioner’s]
explanation does not satisfy our precedential requirement
. . . .”).
And if the agency’s decision “cannot be sustained upon
its reasoning,” then “we must remand to allow the agency to
decide any issues remaining in the case.” Solorio-Ruiz v.
Sessions, 881 F.3d 733, 738 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting Andia
v. Ashcroft, 359 F.3d 1181, 1184 (9th Cir. 2004) (per
curiam)), abrogated in part on other grounds by Stokeling v.
United States, 139 S. Ct. 544 (2019), as recognized by
United States v. Baldon, 956 F.3d 1115, 1121–22 (9th Cir.
2020).

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 15
B. Adverse Credibility Determination
1. Distance and Time Estimates
The primary inconsistency that the IJ identified in
Ms. Munyuh’s testimony regarded how far the police truck
had traveled from Bamenda to Yaoundé before breaking
down. In both her written declaration attached to her asylum
application as well as her initial testimony on cross-
examination, Ms. Munyuh stated that the truck had traveled
only four to five kilometers (2.5 to 3 miles), a tiny fraction
of the over-300-kilometer trip to Yaoundé. If so, then
Ms. Munyuh would have traveled about 242 kilometers
(150 miles) on foot to Bafia before reaching the phone
booth. Even at a constant running speed of 20 kilometers per
hour (12 miles per hour), an unlikely prospect, she would
have needed to run for more than 12 hours straight, far more
than Ms. Munyuh’s estimate of two to three hours. And if
Ms. Munyuh were correct that the truck had broken down
very near Bamenda, then it would have taken far longer than
two or three hours for her husband to reach her.
Confronted with this discrepancy, Ms. Munyuh stated
that she had estimated her original distance because she was
not sure how far the truck had gone. Pressed further on the
issue, she testified that she did not know how far a kilometer
is. She later agreed that the truck had traveled “longer than
an hour” and “longer than two hours” in response to the IJ’s
questions, and on redirect testified that the drive lasted
“about four to five hours.”1
1 On this point, the IJ made findings with which no reasonable
factfinder could agree. She found Ms. Munyuh’s testimony that “the
truck had traveled over two hours” to conflict with her earlier estimate

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In closing, her counsel argued that “considering the harm
and trauma that [she] suffered, it w[ould] be highly unlikely
that [she] would remember precisely everything that
happened to her.” And rebutting the government’s closing
argument, her counsel noted that it is “extremely reasonable”
that she would have been wrong about how far the truck had
traveled because she had been “brutally attacked, beaten
multiple times, [and] raped within a span of less than about
24 hours.”
The IJ stated in her oral decision that the inconsistencies
were not “adequately explained to establish why
[Ms. Munyuh] gave an initial estimate without any hint of
uncertainty in her declaration, and then deferring estimates
each time coming closer to rectifying the implausibility.”
The IJ also found that Ms. Munyuh had failed to explain “the
implausibility that she was raped near Bamenda and was
rescued by her husband within two hours given that at the
time she escaped she would have been six to seven hours by
vehicle from Yaoundé based on her initial estimation.”
that it had traveled “over an hour.” And she found Ms. Munyuh’s redirect
testimony that “the truck [had] traveled approximately four to five hours
before breaking down” to be “clearly in conflict with each of
[Ms. Munyuh]’s prior estimations.”
But these time estimates are all consistent with each other. Indeed,
assuming the truck really had traveled for four to five hours, Ms. Munyuh
had no other choice but to give those answers. The IJ asked her if the
truck had traveled more or less than an hour, to which Ms. Munyuh said
more than an hour. Then the IJ asked whether the truck had traveled at
least two hours, to which Ms. Munyuh answered in the affirmative.
No reasonable factfinder could find those two statements to conflict
with Ms. Munyuh’s later testimony that the truck traveled for four to five
hours. The IJ’s contrary finding is therefore unsupported by substantial
evidence.

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 17
Although the IJ acknowledged that Ms. Munyuh had said she
was only estimating, the IJ focused on the fact that
Ms. Munyuh had not shown any uncertainty until the
government identified the inconsistency on cross-
examination.
For its part, the Board agreed that, “[a]side from any
other inconsistences [sic], . . . the discrepancies in the
distances, locations, and times involved in the respondent’s
claim of her assault and escape are not minor or trivial, and
go to the heart of her claim.” The Board concluded that she
had “not provided a reasonable explanation for these
material discrepancies underlying her claim.”
We disagree. Ms. Munyuh set forth a reasonable and
plausible explanation for the discrepancy between the four-
to-five-kilometer estimate in her written declaration and the
timeline of her account—namely, that she had been “brutally
attacked, beaten multiple times, [and] raped within a span of
less than about 24 hours.” It is reasonable and plausible that
the trauma caused by multiple physical and sexual assaults
would impair Ms. Munyuh’s focus at the time on peripheral
matters and therefore on her memory of those matters. We
have recognized more than once that “[s]exual abuse
commonly results in ‘severe and long-lasting’ effects,
including ‘avoidance of situations that trigger memories of
the violation, profound feelings of shame, [and] difficulty
remembering events.’” Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions,
850 F.3d 1051, 1070–71 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (second
alteration in original) (emphasis added) (quoting Lopez-
Galarza v. INS, 99 F.3d 954, 962 (9th Cir. 1996) (quoting
Shana Swiss & Joan E. Giller, Rape as a Crime of War: A
Medical Perspective, 270 J. Am. Med. Ass’n 612, 614
(1993))).

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Ms. Munyuh’s basic account is not inherently incredible
or internally inconsistent (and is strongly supported by the
corroborating evidence she provided). For one thing, any
distance given would necessarily be an estimate or guess, as
Ms. Munyuh was presumably not sitting in front of an
odometer during the trip. Her timeline makes perfect sense
if one accepts her entirely plausible explanation that she did
not actually know the distance traveled and relies instead on
her estimate at the hearing that she spent “about four to five
hours,” not four to five kilometers, on the road. Had
Ms. Munyuh traveled about four to five hours by truck, the
breakdown would have occurred roughly one-half to three-
quarters of the distance between Bamenda and Yaoundé.
That range comfortably encompasses Bafia, which is about
65% of the way from Bamenda to Yaoundé, and the 10 to
15 kilometers she would have needed to travel on foot to
reach Bafia within two or three hours2 is also well within that
2 The IJ also erroneously faulted Ms. Munyuh’s testimony on this
point:
The respondent then testified that she did not rest or
sleep at all during the time that she traveled to the
phone booth and that she had run or walked for two to
three hours during that time. This very testimony is in
conflict with itself in that she testified that she did not
stop or rest but also that she traveled walking or
running only for two to three hours of that time.
Additionally, it conflicts with remaining testimony in
that the respondent indicated that this estimate of time
during which she was walking or running, she had
reached prior to her merits hearing. The court then
asked if she had reached this estimate prior to the
merits hearing why her declaration indicated that she
ran the whole night? The court also noted that her
testimony to the asylum officer had been similar in
nature in that she had claimed to the asylum officer
that she had to “find her way through all night”

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 19
range. And Bafia is about a two-to-three-hour drive from
Yaoundé, matching both her testimony and her husband’s
affidavit, which declared that he picked her up about two
hours after getting her call.
Although the IJ argued that Ms. Munyuh had not
expressed uncertainty in her estimates until the government
highlighted the distance inconsistency in cross-examination,
that reasoning is not a cogent refutation of Ms. Munyuh’s
explanation. It does not address that a sexual-assault victim
might have an honest yet mistaken belief about the timeline
surrounding the assault. In this case, assuming that
Ms. Munyuh was telling the truth about being beaten and
sexually assaulted, it is certainly plausible that she was not
focused in the interim on the distance she was traveling and
therefore did not form a recoverable direct memory of that
distance, even as a ballpark figure. In attempting to recall
following her escape. When presented with this
inconsistency the respondent could not provide any
explanation whatsoever for the discrepancy.
We do not understand the IJ’s finding that Ms. Munyuh’s testimony
“is in conflict with itself” because she said she did not stop to rest. We
find nowhere in the record that Ms. Munyuh testified that she stopped,
so we do not see how her testimony is self-contradictory.
And there is no timeline discrepancy between “the whole night” and
“two to three hours.” Assuming that Ms. Munyuh’s testimony that the
truck left Bamenda around 9:00 p.m. and that it traveled four to five
hours before breaking down is correct, it would have been about 2:00
a.m. to 3:00 a.m. when the truck broke down. And sunrise in Bafia that
day was at 6:09 a.m. See Nat’l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., ESRL
Global Monitoring Laboratory, https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc (last
visited July 27, 2021) (enter “4.7078283” for latitude and “11.25” for
longitude, and set the date to July 8, 2018). When Ms. Munyuh escaped,
“the whole night” remaining was quite literally about “two to three
hours.”

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those events afterwards, she could well have honestly, but
mistakenly, deduced that the truck broke down shortly after
leaving the Bamenda detention center. As the IJ noted,
Ms. Munyuh appeared to show uncertainty only after being
pressed on the time discrepancy. Such belated uncertainty is
consistent with the explanation that Ms. Munyuh honestly
held a mistaken belief. And, as we have already said,
memory problems manifest commonly in sexual-assault
survivors. Ms. Munyuh’s lack of expressed uncertainty
before being pressed on cross-examination is not a
convincing reason to reject her explanation.3
The last timeline inconsistency identified by the IJ, that
it did not make sense that it would have taken Ms. Munyuh’s
husband two hours to reach Bafia because Bafia was “a
village within Yaoundé,” is unsupported by substantial
evidence. Ms. Munyuh testified only that Bafia is “a village
in Yaoundé already, the outskirt of where my husband lives
in Yaoundé.” There is no other record evidence about
Bafia’s distance from Yaoundé from which the IJ could
conclude that the timeline was off. Looking at a map, we can
see that Bafia is about 130 kilometers (about 81 miles) from
3 Alternatively, Ms. Munyuh may have been generally aware of the
time it took to travel, but mistakenly substituted “kilometers” for “hours”
in her declaration, in which she claimed to have traveled “4–5km.”
Although Ms. Munyuh is an anglophone, her native language is
Moghamo, and her application for asylum lists “Pidgin English” as the
other language she speaks fluently. There is nothing in the record to
refute her explanation that she did not know what a “kilometer” is, and
neither the IJ nor the Board addressed that explanation. And that
misunderstanding would also explain her certainty before cross-
examination—she would have had no reason to believe that her estimate
was off.

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 21
Yaoundé, consistent with the two-hour drive time both
Ms. Munyuh and her husband described.
But even if Bafia had been closer, as the IJ believed,
there could have been any number of reasons why
Ms. Munyuh’s husband might have taken two hours to reach
the village—car trouble, a police blockade, etc. The IJ never
asked for an explanation, and she was required to. Soto-
Olarte, 555 F.3d at 1092 (An 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.” (quoting Don v. Gonzales, 476 F.3d 738, 741 (9th
Cir. 2007))). Had she done so, perhaps Ms. Munyuh could
have clarified what she meant by “outskirt” of Yaoundé,
resolving this discrepancy at the hearing.
2. Other Inconsistencies
As noted above, the Board did not rely on any other
purported inconsistencies that the IJ identified. It expressly
disavowed two of them, and correctly so. No one can be
reasonably expected to have the same emotional state every
time she recounts a traumatic event in her life, especially on
two different occasions, months apart and under different
circumstances. And it is unreasonable to believe that
Ms. Munyuh deliberately waited until after the IJ asked her
about her injuries several times, only to reveal belatedly that
she had experienced bleeding. Rather, Ms. Munyuh’s
explanation, that had she understood her answer about the
swelling in her genital region to encompass bleeding in that
area, makes sense, especially given that English is not her
native language. (Indeed, there are multiple instances in the
record where it is apparent that she either misuses certain
words or at least uses them in differently than an American
English-speaker would.)

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22 M UNYUH V . GARLAND
The IJ’s reliance on these “discrepancies” and the IJ’s
statement that Ms. Munyuh’s affect was “greatly concerning
and cause[d] the court to doubt the genuineness of the
emotion expressed” do not give us great faith in the IJ’s
judgment—our sense is that she was badgering Ms. Munyuh
instead of seeking the truth. The REAL ID Act requires
deference to the IJ “because IJs are in the best position to
assess demeanor and other credibility cues that we cannot
readily access on review,” Shrestha, 590 F.3d at 1041, and
an IJ “is, by virtue of his [or her] acquired skill, uniquely
qualified to decide whether an alien’s testimony has about it
the ring of truth,” ibid. (alteration in original) (quoting H.R.
Rep. No. 109–72, at 167). “But deference does not mean
blindness.” Li v. Ashcroft, 356 F.3d 1153, 1158 (9th Cir.
2004). The IJ here relied on many invalid reasons to discount
Ms. Munyuh’s testimony, including the two specifically
disavowed by the BIA and other purported inconsistencies
that were not supported by substantial evidence. See supra
notes 1–2. Although we hold that the IJ committed legal
error in failing to give specific, cogent reasons for rejecting
Ms. Munyuh’s plausible explanations for the remaining
discrepancies, we note that this particular IJ’s flawed
reasoning on so many issues undercuts our confidence that
she was “uniquely qualified” to assess the truth of
Ms. Munyuh’s testimony as a whole and that her findings
deserve deference.
The Board relied only on the time and distance
discrepancies discussed earlier to affirm the IJ. Other than
disavowing the two findings discussed in the previous
section of this opinion, it did not rule on any other alleged
inconsistencies. The Board may revisit those on remand.

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 23
C. Ms. Munyuh’s Documentation
Ms. Munyuh also challenges the IJ’s decision to discount
her documentation. We agree with her—the IJ committed
legal error by discounting them without giving her an
opportunity to provide corroborative evidence.
Unlike in many immigration cases we see, the affidavits
Ms. Munyuh filed were of high quality. They are signed,
notarized, and in English. The affidavits bear the affiants’
Cameroonian national identity card numbers as well as their
cities of residence. And the affidavits do not give boilerplate,
uniform accounts—they contain different information,
consistent with what each affiant would likely know, and all
of which together confirm the general contours of
Ms. Munyuh’s account. Yet the IJ discounted these
documents because Ms. Munyuh did not present the affiants’
ID cards, because the affiants were not subject to cross-
examination, and because the attorney who notarized the
documents was Ms. Munyuh’s cousin and therefore an
“interested party.”
But the IJ did not ask Ms. Munyuh for the affiants’ ID
cards until the hearing started, and she never asked her to
produce the affiants to testify and be cross-examined. The
affiants provided their national ID card numbers and the
dates and locations the cards were issued in their
declarations. (From the record, it seems as though the IJ
wanted original ID cards, though the affiants would
reasonably want to keep their original ID cards in
Cameroon.) Ms. Munyuh’s attorney represented that he
could have gotten copies of the ID cards if he had known to
ask for them, and he noted on the record that he had only
recently received the documents. The IJ therefore erred by
failing to give Ms. Munyuh adequate notice that she was
required to present such corroborative evidence and the

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24 M UNYUH V . GARLAND
opportunity either to obtain it or explain why it was
unavailable. See Ai Jun Zhi v. Holder, 751 F.3d 1088, 1094–
95 (9th Cir. 2014).
We also note that, given the opportunity to present
additional evidence, Ms. Munyuh may also be able to quell
the IJ’s fears about the medical report’s chain of custody—
for example, if her husband testifies or provides a
supplementary affidavit. And the IJ’s concern that the notary
was Ms. Munyuh’s cousin went only to whether the
attorney-notary-cousin would have sufficiently verified the
affiants’ identities. (Of course, that does not make sense for
the affiants who were also part of Ms. Munyuh’s family.)
But we think that concern could have been resolved had
Ms. Munyuh been allowed to verify those identities by other
means.
As for the IJ’s concerns about a “strange blue square”
around the medical report’s letterhead seal, we note that this
square does not appear in the copies of the certified
administrative record that we received. And there were no
other indications that the document was falsified—in fact,
the IJ expressly noted during the hearing that “it does appear
to have an original stamp and an original signature” and
declined to find the document to be falsified. Substantial
evidence does not support discounting the medical report’s
weight based solely on a printing artifact in its letterhead.
The IJ’s error in discounting these documents is also
relevant to the ultimate determination of Ms. Munyuh’s
credibility. An IJ must consider “other record evidence that
sheds light on whether there is in fact an inconsistency” in a
petitioner’s explanation. Shrestha, 590 F.3d at 1044. Here,
Ms. Munyuh’s neighbor corroborates her testimony that she
was beaten by the military men who came to arrest her on
the morning of July 7, 2018. Her husband corroborates her

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M UNYUH V . GARLAND 25
testimony that she called him from Bafia the next morning,
he picked her up from there two hours later, and she was
severely injured when he arrived. The medical report gives
a detailed analysis of Ms. Munyuh’s physical condition
directly after her ordeal, including evidence of severe
bruising across her body, swelling and loss of function in her
feet, and “signs of forceful vaginal penetration.” These
documents all strongly support Ms. Munyuh’s account of
what happened to her.
III. Conclusion
Ms. Munyuh’s case concerns us. From our reading of the
record, the IJ seemed determined to pick every nit she could
find. Besides erring procedurally, the IJ discounted
probative evidence on flimsy grounds and displayed a
dubious understanding of how rape survivors ought to act.
Although we give great deference to the IJ as factfinder,
substantial-evidence review does not require us to credit the
credibility finding of an IJ who cherry-picks from—or
misconstrues—the record to reach it. The IJ must consider
the “totality of the circumstances, and all relevant factors.”
8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii) (emphasis added).
At the very least, the two legal errors we have identified
warrant remand. The IJ erred by failing to give specific,
cogent reasons for rejecting Ms. Munyuh’s reasonable,
plausible explanations for the discrepancies tied to her
declaration that the police truck broke down after only four
or five kilometers. And she further erred by discounting the
supporting documentation without giving Ms. Munyuh
adequate notice and opportunity to provide corroborative
evidence. We therefore vacate the removal order and remand

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26 M UNYUH V . GARLAND
the case to the Board for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
PETITION GRANTED; VACATED and
REMANDED.

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