FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION APR 04 2016
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
LIXIANG HUANG, No. 11-73306
Petitioner, Agency No. A099-397-580
v.
MEMORANDUM*
LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General,
Respondent.
On Petition for Review of an Order of the
Board of Immigration Appeals
Submitted February 3, 2016**
Pasadena, California
Before: PREGERSON, WARDLAW, and HURWITZ, Circuit Judges.
Petitioner Lixiang Huang appeals the BIA’s denial of his petition for asylum
and withholding of removal. Huang is a Chinese immigrant from Taishan City, in
the Guangdong Province. According to Huang, in China, he helped his mother
practice Falun Gong after it was banned by the Chinese government in 1999.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
Huang took his mother by bike to and from her Falun Gong meetings, and stood
guard while she was there. In May 2003, when Huang arrived to pick his mother
up at a Falun Gong meeting place, police arrested Huang, his mother, and her
fellow practitioners. Police accused Huang of aiding and covering up illegal Falun
Gong activity and detained him for two days. They threatened Huang with three
years of detention if he were caught facilitating the practice of Falun Gong again.
Huang continued to help his mother, and in November 2004, the two barely
avoided being caught in a raid at the house where Huang’s mother had been
practicing Falun Gong. After the raid, law enforcement continued looking for
Huang and his mother. Upon learning that the police were waiting at their home to
arrest them, Huang and his mother went into hiding with a relative in the
countryside. In 2004, after a Neighborhood Committee cadre showed up at his
relative’s home, Huang obtained a passport and fled to Mexico and then to the
United States.
Huang timely filed an application for asylum and withholding of removal.
The IJ denied his application, finding that Huang had not provided credible
testimony to meet his burden of proof for his asylum and withholding of removal
claims. The IJ found that Huang was non-responsive and that there were
inconsistencies in his testimony bearing on his credibility. The BIA affirmed.
2
We review adverse credibility determinations for substantial evidence.
Garcia v. Holder, 749 F.3d 785, 789 (9th Cir. 2014). “We may reverse factual
determinations only when ‘any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to
conclude to the contrary’ based on the evidence in the record.” Zhi v. Holder, 751
F.3d 1088, 1091 (9th Cir. 2014) (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(4)(B)). When, as
here, the BIA adopts the reasoning of the IJ, we review the IJ’s decision. Li v.
Holder, 559 F.3d 1096, 1102 (9th Cir. 2009).
“Even where there is no due process violation, faulty or unreliable
translations can undermine the evidence on which an adverse credibility
determination is based.” He v. Ashcroft, 328 F.3d 593, 598 (9th Cir. 2003); see
also Ren v. Holder, 648 F.3d 1079, 1088 n.7 (9th Cir. 2011) (citing He in a case
governed by the REAL ID Act). What’s more, we have also stated that
“unresponsive answers by the witness provide circumstantial evidence of
translation problems.” Perez-Lastor v. I.N.S., 208 F.3d 773, 778 (9th Cir. 2000).
The record suggests that what the IJ construed as non-responsiveness was
actually Huang’s inability to understand and respond to the questions posed to him
3
at his immigration hearing.1 Huang was unable to satisfactorily answer even his
own lawyer’s questions. As the IJ pointed out, “Frequently Government counsel,
the Immigration Judge, and even [Huang’s] own counsel had to repeat questions to
obtain an answer that was responsive.” Huang’s difficulty in effectively
responding to his counsel’s questions shows Huang’s inability to understand what
was being asked. It was of course in Huang’s best interest to answer his counsel’s
questions as accurately and comprehensively as possible. His failure to do so
constitutes “circumstantial evidence of translation problems.” Perez-Lastor, 208
F.3d at 778.
1
Huang was provided Cantonese-speaking interpreters during his removal
proceedings. Huang was born in the City of Taishan in February 1968 and lived
there through January 2005, for almost forty years. Although his asylum
application lists Cantonese as his native language, it is likely that Huang speaks a
dialect of Chinese related to, but distinct from Cantonese, known as Taishan or
Toisan. Indeed, Taishan is conventionally classified along with Cantonese, even
though the two dialects belong to different subgroups of the Yue dialect. See
Cecilia Szeto, Testing Intelligibility Among Sinitic Dialects, Proceedings of
ALS2K, the 2000 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, at 4 (linguistic
study, which found that Cantonese speakers without a special familiarity with
Taishanese could only understand 31.3% of Taishanese sentences),
http://alsasn.server322.com/proceedings/als2000/szeto.pdf. Although Cantonese
and Taishan are related, they are “not entirely mutually intelligible.” See, e.g.,
Teresa M. Cheng, The Phonology of Taishan, 1 J. Chinese Linguistics 256, 256
(1973), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 23749797 (Although Taishanese
is a Cantonese dialect and “bears great resemblance” to Cantonese, the two are
“not entirely mutually intelligible.”). Huang and his Cantonese interpreter very
well may have been speaking distinct, mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects.
4
Because the IJ mischaracterized Huang’s testimony as deliberately non-
responsive, it was unreasonable for the IJ to use that testimony to support an
adverse credibility determination. We grant Huang’s petition for review of his
asylum and withholding of removal claims, and we remand to the BIA.
The panel retains jurisdiction.
The petition for review is GRANTED and REMANDED.
5