Revista Temas de Derecho Constitucional

152 Revista Temas de Derecho Constitucional president. The Tupamaros left a threatening note on her car the day after she published comments urging people to march to the President’s Mansion in Miraflores. Another time, she attended a political rally in which she took photos of the National Guard attacking people. Police officers stopped her car and searched her vehicle. Another incident occurred during her participation in a political demonstration, in which the Turpamaros threw tear gas at protesters and the National Guard allowed them to do so. She had attended the demonstration as a journalist. The National Guard detained her for 30 minutes, officers took photos of her ID. She heard shooting by the Tuparamaros and ran and hid behind a car. She claimed that the colectivos chased her, grabbed her camera, and kicked her. The following year she attended a demonstration at the UN building, She filmed the police and National Guard use tear gas on the journalists and demonstrators. She also filmed the police permitting the colectivos to attack the demonstrators. She claims that the police threw tear gas at her building in retaliation. She published the photos of the events on social network. That night, she alleged that the colectivos entered her home with weapons, threw her mother to the ground and took Vallenilla to her room, held a guns at them while they searched her room. They demanded the photos and deletion of the videos she had posted on social networks. This lasted 30 minutes. She called the police but they never arrived. She claimed to have experienced an assassination attempt two days later, in which two men on a motorcycle tried to shoot her. She left Venezuela, and her mother stated that they continue to visit her family home and fire guns into the air. The Immigration Judge ( hereinafter IJ) denied her asylum claim, concluding that she failed to present credible and sufficient evidence that she had a well-founded fear of persecution on account of political opinion. The IJ concluded that she failed to prove that the men who searched her home were linked to the government, while Vallenilla described them as Tupamaros (agents of the government), her mother referred to them as “three armed men”. Further, the IJ stated that she failed to provide corroborative evidence to support her claim that she was a member of Voluntad Popular , such as a membership card, or letters from her family about the men around the house. The Board of Immigration Appeals ( hereinafter BIA) upheld the IJ, noting that her omitted and inconsistent evidence were significant because the identity of the men who committed the acts was material to her claim and she had no other corroborative evidence, such as affidavits fromwitnesses, other family members, or other journalists receiving similar treatment. Vallenilla appealed, claiming that the BIA erred in adopting the IJ’s adverse credibility determination and that she had presented sufficient corroborative evidence. The Court of Appeals noted that: “Although persecution is an ‘extreme’ concept, requiring more than a few isolated incidents of verbal harassment or intimidation, we have concluded that ‘being shot at in a moving car multiple times by two armed men on motorcycles qualifies as ‘extreme’ under any definition because attempted murder is persecution’.” Furthermore, the Court of Appeals confirmed that an applicant’s testimony, if credible, may be sufficient to sustain her burden of proof, without corroborating evidence. The