Thread by @HMAesq

I ran into a gentleman coming back from San Diego who asked me where I was coming from. I told him I had been in Tijuana, Mexico helping people apply for asylum.

"Good for you!" he exclaimed, then added, "It must be hard to know if they're telling the truth."

Sigh...

How do we ever know whether someone is telling the truth? As client-serving lawyers, we have to ask ourselves this every day. We are practiced at looking at the facts, and poking holes to see how well the story stands up.

But this is what I wanted to tell the gentleman:

The only reason they're called liars is because that makes it easier to shut the door in their face. If there's a hole in the story, then logically, it does not follow that the story is a lie. Finding a hole in the story is the *beginning* of the work to verify, not the end.

Those who proclaim "Gotcha!" are practicing textbook denialism, and share more than a brain cell or two with Birthers, Truthers, Holocaust deniers, and my Uber driver in Cleveland who told me about the Starchild Skull and how Trump wouldn't order Space Force if we didn't need it.

Calling asylum seekers liars is a sign of a feeble intellect.

So why did I believe them?

They couldn't wait to tell their story, like every woman who waited outside in the heat to talk to me. They spoke naturally even when their eyes teared up.

They remembered details vividly: the more I asked, the more details came forth, like the woman who was chased by corrupt Federales and kept telling me details about these officers, what they looked like, the color of their uniforms.

Their stories were simple and direct and didn't fall apart even on scrutiny. Many of them told me they enjoyed life - "estábamos tranquilos!" - before the gangs or cartels or abusive spouses terrorized them and their families.

Or the pages of written evidence brought by others - including not just police reports, but entire investigative files with pictures of bullet wounds, blood-stained ground, or wrecked cars.

They loved it when I whipped out my phone to live fact-check them.

Once I read a sentence and my client-a man with almost no education-finished it for me. It even held up if I changed details deliberately to see if they caught me. "No, I said twice." "No, I said in Guerrero." "No, Cartel Jalisco de Nueva Generación, not La Familia Michoacán."

If this was a criminal prosecution, all of these people proved their cases beyond a reasonable doubt.

"But it could have been faked" is the battle-cry of the eternal half-wit.