Arnaud Tawuo v. LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General of the United States

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 14-2937
A RNAUD T AWUO,
Petitioner,
v.
LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General of the United States,
Respondent.
____________________
Petition for Review of an Order of
the Board of Immigration Appeals.
No. A088 551 142
____________________
A RGUED A PRIL 20, 2015 — D ECIDED A UGUST 20, 2015
____________________
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, HAMILTON, Circuit Judge, and
D ARRAH, District Judge. *
W OOD, Chief Judge. Arnaud Tawuo came to this country
on a student visa in 2009 after what he describes as a hellish
experience as a student activist in his home country of Cam-
* Hon. John W. Darrah of the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by
designation.

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2 No. 14-2937
eroon. Within a year of his arrival, he filed an application for
asylum and withholding of removal with U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (CIS). In support of the applica-
tion, he included an affidavit detailing his treatment in
Cameroon. It was not long before Tawuo was ordered to ap-
pear for removal proceedings. After retaining an attorney,
Tawuo submitted a supplemental asylum application with
another affidavit, this one longer and more detailed than the
first. After hearings before the immigration judge (IJ) in 2011
at which Tawuo was the sole witness, the judge denied
Tawuo’s asylum application because he found Tawuo not to
be credible. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed this
decision in 2014. Given the high degree of deference we are
required to give to the IJ’s credibility determinations, we find
no ground for upsetting the Board’s decision. The judge’s
finding that Tawuo’s testimony and affidavits were not cred-
ible was based upon a detailed analysis of the record. Sub-
stantial evidence supports the decision, and so we deny
Tawuo’s petition for review.
I
Tawuo was born in Cameroon in 1986. He entered the
United States through New York in December 2009; he had
received a nonimmigrant student visa to attend Bluedata In-
ternational Institute there. He got as far as registering at
Bluedata, but he did not attend for long. Later Tawuo moved
to Skokie, Illinois, and in August 2010 he applied for asylum
and withholding of removal with the CIS office in Chicago.
In his application, Tawuo said he was seeking asylum on the
basis of his political opinions and membership in a particu-
lar social group in Cameroon, adding that he feared harm or
mistreatment if he were to return. Tawuo’s accompanying

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No. 14-2937 3
three-page affidavit described how he “was arrested, de-
tained and tortured due to my activities with the Association
for the Defense of the Rights of University Students in Cam-
eroon (ADDEC).” CIS deemed Tawuo’s application not cred-
ible, citing material inconsistencies between his affidavit and
other evidence as well as “material implausibility.”
A few months later, the Department of Homeland Securi-
ty ordered Tawuo to appear for removal proceedings. In the
order, the Department noted that Tawuo had not attended
the Bluedata Institute since five days after his arrival in New
York and had thus failed to comply with his visa in violation
of 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(C)(i). At a hearing before an IJ in No-
vember 2010, Tawuo through counsel conceded the charges
listed in his notice to appear and said that he would be re-
newing his asylum application. The judge told Tawuo to
submit “an affidavit stating the principal facts” of his case.
The resulting ten-page filing was significantly more detailed
than Tawuo’s first affidavit, and it contained descriptions of
his experiences as a student activist that his first submission
had not mentioned. He claimed to have suffered multiple
arrests, beatings, interrogations, and periods of torture by
police in Cameroon.
In 2011, the IJ held a hearing on Tawuo’s renewed asylum
application. Tawuo testified extensively about his life in
Cameroon, his participation in ADDEC, and his subsequent
persecution by police. The judge concluded that Tawuo was
not credible and had not produced any other evidence suffi-
cient to corroborate his account. With respect to Tawuo’s
credibility, the judge thought that Tawuo had exaggerated
his role in ADDEC “and inserted his own narrative into
well-publicized events in order to bolster a claim for relief.”

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4 No. 14-2937
The judge also believed that Tawuo had misrepresented his
claims of mistreatment. Overall, the IJ concluded that it was
not possible to “be certain about nearly anything the re-
spondent has said regarding his activism.” The judge sin-
gled out four areas of Tawuo’s case that were especially
troubling: first, the omission of claims from his first asylum
application that were included in his renewed application;
second, discrepancies between Tawuo’s testimony and the
written record; third, plagiarism in Tawuo’s second affidavit;
and finally, Tawuo’s misrepresentations about his visa appli-
cation process. The judge also analyzed Tawuo’s corroborat-
ing evidence before finding it to be deficient.
Tawuo appealed the IJ’s decision to the Board of Immi-
gration Appeals. The Board found no clear error in the
judge’s findings on Tawuo’s credibility and corroborating
evidence and dismissed his appeal. Tawuo timely filed a pe-
tition for review with this court; we have jurisdiction to con-
sider his petition under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a).
II
This is a case in which the applicable standard of review
is critical. An immigration judge’s “credibility determina-
tions are questions of fact and should only be overturned
under extraordinary circumstances, although they must be
supported by specific, cogent reasons that bear a legitimate
nexus to the finding.” Rama v. Holder, 607 F.3d 461, 465 (7th
Cir. 2010) (quotations and alterations omitted). We are re-
quired to “review the immigration judge and the Board un-
der the deferential substantial evidence standard, meaning
that we may only reverse their factual findings if the facts
compel an opposite conclusion.” Tian v. Holder, 745 F.3d 822,
828 (7th Cir. 2014). For cases such as Tawuo’s, which is gov-

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No. 14-2937 5
erned by the REAL ID Act, the IJ’s authority is even greater.
The judge may base a credibility finding on the evidence as a
whole, including the internal consistency of the applicant’s
statements. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii). We have noted
that “[u]nder the Real ID Act, … immigration judges can
base an adverse credibility finding on any inconsistency,
whether it goes to the heart of the applicant’s claim or not.”
Georgieva v. Holder, 751 F.3d 514, 520 n.2 (7th Cir. 2014). That
said, the inconsistencies spotted by the IJ should not be trivi-
al. See Hassan v. Holder, 571 F.3d 631, 637 (7th Cir. 2009). In
Tawuo’s case, the Board found no reason to reject the IJ’s
findings, nor do we. (We note that when the BIA, as it has
done here, “agrees with the decision of the immigration
judge, adopts that decision and supplements that decision
with its own reasoning, … we review the immigration
judge’s decision as supplemented by the Board.” Antia-Perea
v. Holder, 768 F.3d 647, 658 (7th Cir. 2014) (quotations omit-
ted).)
The IJ was particularly concerned about text in Tawuo’s
second affidavit that previously had appeared nearly verba-
tim in articles on the Internet site Wikinews. When the gov-
ernment’s attorney called this to Tawuo’s attention, Tawuo
said that he “personally wrote articles” about the events he
described in his affidavit, and he speculated that “somebody
might have used this information” in the Wikinews article.
This bothered the IJ. He noted that the text in question con-
cerned background issues in Tawuo’s case, but it prompted
him to question Tawuo’s other personal observations. The
judge refused to credit Tawuo’s suggestion that Wikinews
may have plagiarized Tawuo’s own articles, because Tawuo
proffered no evidence that he wrote any. Tawuo argues now
that he “was not given an opportunity” to furnish copies of

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6 No. 14-2937
the articles. Not so; that is the purpose of a motion to reopen.
The presence of possible plagiarism is a serious issue, and
the IJ or Board would have been obliged to accept Tawuo’s
submission. Yet he and his attorney failed to use this oppor-
tunity to bolster his case. We are not saying that plagiarism
in an application for asylum is an automatic indicator that
the applicant is not credible. Nevertheless, it was reasonable
for the IJ to consider Tawuo’s apparent plagiarism in this
case, along with his weak explanation for it, as evidence of
his overall lack of credibility.
The IJ also cited changes Tawuo made to his story about
his visa application process when he was confronted with
contrary evidence. In his initial affidavit, Tawuo said he was
“lucky” to receive a United States visa on his first attempt to
apply. But he did not get a visa on his first try. Actually, the
government rejected Tawuo’s first visa application. When the
government confronted Tawuo about this, he claimed that
only his second visa attempt “counted” because only then
did a “guidance counselor” explain the application process
to him. This explanation did not impress the IJ, who called it
a worrisome misrepresentation given Tawuo’s unambiguous
earlier statement about his good luck “at my first applica-
tion.” We cannot fault this concern. When caught in what
appeared to be a lie, Tawuo provided an unconvincing ex-
planation. The IJ was well within his rights to regard this as
evidence of a lack of credibility.
We are not as troubled as the IJ was by some of Tawuo’s
other supposed indiscretions, but in the end this does not
matter. The judge identified several “material aspects” of
Tawuo’s claim that he discussed in his second affidavit but
not his first. These aspects disturbed the judge because they

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No. 14-2937 7
made Tawuo’s narrative “considerably more coherent” and
increased the amount of mistreatment he supposedly re-
ceived. Tawuo argues that he had no attorney when writing
his first affidavit and as a result mistakenly thought he could
simply summarize his experiences. The judge dismissed this
explanation, reasoning that Tawuo, as a well-educated per-
son aware that his stay in the United States was on the line,
would have known he had to disclose everything the first
time around. We see little basis for this leap of logic. Al-
though he had learned English, Tawuo was an engineer, not
a lawyer, and was relatively new to this country and the asy-
lum process.
The IJ also found fault with two inconsistencies between
Tawuo’s first affidavit and his later affidavit and testimony.
Tawuo changed his story about the length of a hospital stay
he had in Cameroon. He also stated during his live testimo-
ny (and not before) that he remained active in ADDEC.
These too do not seem like earth-shaking problems. But our
task is not to find reasons to disagree with the IJ. We will not
overturn a credibility determination “simply because the ev-
idence might support an alternate finding.” Xiao v. Mukasey,
547 F.3d 712, 717 (7th Cir. 2008). We need only assure our-
selves that the IJ, and ultimately the Board, provided specific
reasons based in the evidence for their credibility determina-
tions. They did so.
Tawuo also challenges a few other aspects of the judge’s
decision. We address these arguments briefly. He contends
that the IJ did not let him provide documents that would
have corroborated his account of his mistreatment in Came-
roon. Yet Tawuo did submit what he believed were corrobo-
rating documents. His argument appears to be that, having

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8 No. 14-2937
considered these documents and found them wanting, the IJ
should have given Tawuo one more chance to submit better
evidence. We have specifically rejected this argument. See
Abraham v. Holder, 647 F.3d 626, 633–34 (7th Cir. 2011); Ra-
pheal v. Mukasey, 533 F.3d 521, 530 (7th Cir. 2008). Tawuo also
contends that the government had a duty to send his evi-
dence “to a forensics laboratory” for authentication. This ar-
gument turns the burden of proof on its head. It was
Tawuo’s job to authenticate his own documents, not the gov-
ernment’s. The judge’s determination that he did not do so
was not unreasonable. Finally, Tawuo argues that the judge
should have considered his demeanor and candor. He com-
plains that the judge’s impressions in this regard must have
faded between the initial hearing and the publication of the
IJ’s decision some fourteen months later. It is true that the
asylum statute permits an immigration judge to consider an
applicant’s demeanor and candor in making a credibility de-
termination, see 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(iii), but the statute
does not require such consideration. No matter: the judge
did consider Tawuo’s candor and found Tawuo to be un-
truthful. As we have said, this conclusion was not unreason-
able.
III
Tawuo has not shown that the IJ’s credibility determina-
tion was erroneous, nor has he met the high burden of show-
ing that the IJ’s finding that corroborating evidence did not
cure this problem was incorrect. We conclude, to the contra-
ry, that substantial evidence supported the IJ’s and the
Board’s decisions, and we therefore DENY Tawuo’s petition
for review.

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