Background
Joao Mbueno-Vita, his wife, and their two children are Angolan citizens who entered the United States in 2022. Mbueno-Vita sought asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture protection based on his UNITA membership and political opposition to Angola’s ruling MPLA party.
He testified that police injured him after a 2019 opposition rally and that military personnel arrested and tortured him for two days after a 2021 rally. After publicly denouncing a detainee’s death, he went into hiding with his family before they left Angola. The Immigration Judge found him not credible and denied relief; the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review, reversed the adverse credibility determination, and remanded. None of the agency’s four stated credibility grounds was supported by substantial evidence. The supposed discrepancies about the precise location of a leg injury and his position while being beaten were trivial or plausibly attributable to misunderstanding, and the court found significant translation problems throughout the hearing.
The court also held that the agency committed reversible legal error in denying CAT relief. The State Department report concerning Angolan government treatment of opposition-party members was probative of Mbueno-Vita’s particularized risk of torture. The agency also improperly treated four months spent hiding in another province as evidence that internal relocation was safe, without properly considering that the central government remained controlled by the alleged persecutor.
Key Takeaways
- Minor or semantic discrepancies, especially in testimony about traumatic events, cannot alone support an adverse credibility finding.
- Translation failures that prevent an applicant from understanding questions undermine reliance on perceived unresponsiveness or inconsistency.
- For CAT claims, country evidence targeting a discrete class to which the applicant belongs can establish a particularized risk.
- Living in hiding does not demonstrate that internal relocation is safe.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that immigration adjudicators must assess credibility under the full record rather than elevate trivial discrepancies or communication failures into evidence of dishonesty.
On remand, the agency must accept Mbueno-Vita’s testimony as credible and determine his eligibility for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection.