The Ninth Circuit has granted a petition for review filed by an Angolan opposition-party activist and his family, holding that the agency's adverse credibility determination was not supported by substantial evidence because it rested on trivial inconsistencies and disjointed testimony attributable to translation difficulties rather than any lack of veracity.
The Court held that minor variations in describing the exact location of an injury sustained during a chaotic police attack, an ambiguous asylum-application phrase that did not actually contradict later testimony, and apparent nonresponsiveness that instead reflected the petitioner's evident confusion amid garbled interpretation could not support an adverse credibility finding under the totality of the circumstances. The Court also held the agency committed legal error in denying CAT relief by overlooking country-conditions evidence tying the petitioner's political party membership to a particularized risk of torture and by failing to recognize that his family's months spent in hiding did not show a viable option for internal relocation.
The full text of Mbueno-Vita v. Blanche can be found here: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/08/28/24-5472.pdf