Tassi v. Holder

• Citation: 660 F.3d 710
• Decision Date: 07 November 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–2194.,10–2194.
• Parties: Coretha Amuzang TASSI, Petitioner, v. Eric H. HOLDER, Jr., Respondent.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

660 F.3d 710

Coretha Amuzang TASSI, Petitioner,

v.Eric H. HOLDER, Jr., Respondent.

No. 10–2194.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Sept. 21, 2011.Decided: Nov. 7, 2011.

ARGUED: Danielle L.C. Beach–Oswald, Beach–Oswald Immigration Law Associates, PC, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Franklin M. Johnson, Jr., United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Tony West, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Douglas E. Ginsburg, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Respondent.

Before NIEMEYER and KING, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge.

Petition for review granted; vacated and remanded by published opinion. Judge KING wrote the opinion, in which Judge NIEMEYER and Senior Judge HAMILTON joined.

OPINION

KING, Circuit Judge:

Coretha Amuzang Tassi, a native and citizen of the Republic of Cameroon, petitions for review of the final order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (the “BIA”) affirming the denial of her claims for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (the “CAT”). As explained below, we grant the petition for review, vacate the BIA's order, and remand for further proceedings.

I.

On February 22, 2002, Tassi entered the United States on a thirty-day visitor visa. She overstayed her visa and filed an asylum application on March 28, 2002. On May 29, 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the “INS”) referred her application to an immigration judge (the “IJ”).¹ At the IJ's initial hearing on June 25, 2002, Tassi conceded removability but sought relief through asylum, withholding of removal, and the CAT (collectively, the “asylum application”). Evidentiary hearings concerning the asylum application were held before the IJ on May 17, 2004, June 12, 2006, September 6, 2006, and June 23, 2008. The evidence submitted with the asylum application and adduced at the IJ hearings, as well as the findings and conclusions of the IJ and the BIA, are summarized below.

A.

Tassi, an Anglophone citizen of the Francophone-dominant Republic of Cameroon (hereinafter “Cameroon”), became a student at the University of Buea in the Anglophone South West Province of Cameroon in 1994, and she was a graduate student there before entering the United States in 2002.² As editor and assistant publisher of the University's student newspaper, Tassi circulated information about the Southern Cameroon independence movement and featured articles on Anglophone marginalization. Tassi testified that, to support the Southern Cameroon independence movement, she joined the Southern Cameroon(s) National Council (“SCNC”) in 1994 and the Southern Cameroon(s) Youth League (“SCYL”) in 1996, serving as the public relations officer for SCYL.

According to Tassi and her husband, Reeves Ade, Tassi was arrested in Cameroon three times because of her involvement with the student newspaper and her affiliations with SCNC and SCYL. First, on January 15, 1997, she was arrested for publishing an edition of the newspaper that was critical of school authorities for expelling the student union president. On that occasion, four men in plain clothes took Tassi to a “brigade” in Buea where she was stripped to her underwear, beaten all over her body, and locked in a cell.³ Tassi was released on January 18, 1997, after her lawyer, Sam Ekontang Elad, and her uncle intervened, and after students had threatened to boycott exams. Tassi was arrested a second time on April 7, 1997, because of her leadership position in SCYL. Two gendarmes took her to the brigade in Buea where she was beaten and interrogated for five hours, and she was released only after signing a document denouncing her SCYL membership.

Tassi's third arrest occurred on January 8, 2000, while she was attending a demonstration in the city of Limbe celebrating the announced independence of Southern Cameroon. Tassi was initially detained at a police station in Limbe, then transferred to the brigade in Buea where she was again beaten and locked in a cell for twelve days. Tassi was released once more with the help of lawyer Elad and her uncle, after signing a statement agreeing to report to the brigade every other Monday. Tassi's “Release Order” from the “Central Prison Buea” is dated January 20, 2000. See J.A. 619. According to Reeves Ade and Tassi's mother-in-law, Anastasia Ade, when Tassi was released, she had a gash on her left check and bruises on her body, so they rushed her to the hospital. Upon her admission to the hospital, Tassi's doctors completed a “Medico–Legal Certificate” on government letterhead, also dated January 20, 2000, stating that her injuries “presumed to be due to police battery.” Id. at 606. Tassi testified that she remained in the hospital for three days. Reeves confirmed that Tassi thereafter reported to the brigade for a few Mondays, but ceased the practice because she was not requested to do anything and sometimes was told simply to return home.

In October 2001, while Tassi and Reeves were attending a celebration for independence in Buea, they received a tip from a policeman that Tassi's name was on a list of persons who were to be arrested that very day. They promptly fled to the Chumba village in Bamenda, the capital of the North West Province, where Tassi remained in hiding for several months, until February 2002. Tassi's father then made arrangements with a family friend named Chief Fomuki to get Tassi out of Cameroon. Chief Fomuki, who was travelling to the United States on business, agreed that Tassi could accompany him, posing as his wife. They obtained a visa and passport for Tassi at the American embassy, listing her surname as Fomuki. Reeves testified that, in early March 2002, after Tassi had left for the United States, the Cameroonian authorities came to their home looking for Tassi and served him with a “Convocation” ordering Tassi to report at the “Gendarmerie.” J.A. 639. Reeves explained that the police also searched the house, closed his stores, and threatened to put him in jail. Consequently, Reeves also fled to the United States, using a fake passport, and, according to Tassi, arrived in September 2002.

In addition to her own testimony and that of Reeves and Anastasia Ade, Tassi presented the evidence of Justice Aloysius Mbu, whom the IJ accepted as an expert on “human rights and politics in Cameroon.” See J.A. 144.⁴ Justice Mbu had reviewed Tassi's asylum application and affidavit, and explained that active members of SCNC and SCYL, like Tassi, are routinely persecuted in Cameroon. Mbu elaborated on the daily arrests and disappearances in Cameroon of SCNC and SCYL members. He stated that he believed Tassi to be credible, especially since he had confirmed her story with her Cameroonian attorney, Elad. According to Justice Mbu, Tassi remained active in SCNC in the United States, and would therefore be arrested, detained, or even killed if she were to return to Cameroon.

Tassi also submitted several documents in support of her asylum application, including: (1) a letter from Ebenezer Derek Mbongo Akwanga, Jr., founder and national chairman of SCYL, explaining that Tassi was “extremely active” in SCYL, that she had been “blacklisted” by the Cameroonian authorities because of her political involvement and ties to him, and that her life would thus be in danger if she returned to Cameroon, see J.A. 394–98; (2) a letter from Charles Mbide Kude, SCNC's assistant secretary general, describing Tassi as an “activist of the SCNC” who had “contributed enormously to the struggle for self determination of the Southern Cameroons as an independent country” and had “suffered serious torture” in support of such efforts, id. at 625–26; (3) an affidavit of John Fomunyoh, chairman of the “Southern Cameroons Restoration Movement,” specifying that Tassi is an “active member of the Southern Cameroons Peoples Conference in the United States” and would be arrested again if she were to return to Cameroon, id. at 1220–21; (4) a letter from lawyer Sam Elad, Tassi's attorney and the “pioneer chairman” of SCNC, detailing Tassi's involvement in SCNC and SCYL and confirming her arrests, id. at 622–23; (5) a handwritten January 2003 letter from a clinical psychologist, Dr. Jean Francis Ladkin, acknowledging Tassi's claims of past persecution and her self-reported symptoms, and concluding that Tassi's “psychological state strongly points to a very severe state of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder” (“PTSD”), id. at 628–30; and (6) a September 2005 article published in The Guardian Post of Yaounde, Cameroon, relating that the police in Cameroon were looking for persons connected with SCNC, including “Tassi Coretha, a fire-brand activist ... who was arrested and reportedly tortured on several occasions,” and who was “suspect[ed]” of having “sneaked back” into the country to “foment trouble,” id. at 582–83. Additionally, Tassi submitted other supporting documents to the IJ, including marriage and birth certificates; a Cameroonian passport; membership cards for SCNC, SCYL, and the Association of Student Journalists; an arrest warrant dated January 7, 2000; the Release Order of January 20, 2000; the Medico–Legal Certificate, also dated January 20, 2000; the Convocation dated March 12, 2002; the 2000 and 2004 State Department country reports on human rights practices in Cameroon; plus other reports and articles on Cameroon.

B.

By decision of January 2, 2009 (the “IJ Decision”), the IJ denied the asylum application, explaining that Tassi's “testimony contained numerous internal inconsistencies that cast doubt on her overall credibility.” IJ Decision 15.⁵ The IJ Decision emphasized six such inconsistencies:

• Tassi testified that SCYL was a part of SCNC. When shown a printout of SCYL's website stating that SCYL was not part of SCNC, however, Tassi stated that SCYL was created...