Abstract
U.S. courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) have long treated the U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices as uniquely authoritative sources for determining country conditions in claims for immigration protection. In its 2025 precedential opinion Matter of A-A-R-, the BIA extended this deference to claims for protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). This decision and others like it raise the question: whose voice matters most when evaluating the likelihood that an applicant faces torture, and why?
This Article critically examines the evolution of the Country Reports’ authoritative role in U.S. protection claims, with a focus on CAT adjudications. It argues that Matter of A-A-R- and similar cases do more than establish an evidentiary preference: they incentivize selective reporting and the sanitization of country conditions, making relief effectively unattainable and undermining the United States’ obligations under domestic and international law, including the principle of non-refoulement. These effects may operate on multiple layers. First, elevating the Country Report itself over other forms of evidence creates opportunities for manipulation. The 2024 Country Report on El Salvador, released in 2025, illustrates this risk, broadly omitting or minimizing entire categories of abuse while largely echoing Salvadoran state narratives. Second, as the BIA did in Matter of A-A-R-, courts may selectively favor official state voices within the report itself. This dual filtering—across sources and, more surreptitiously, within reports—systematically privileges government perspectives, silences critical voices, and obscures the real risks applicants face. This Article argues that to fulfill its domestic and international obligations, the U.S. must ensure that CAT adjudicators consider all relevant evidence—including non-state reports, survivor testimony, and independent human rights documentation—rather than relying uncritically on state-controlled narratives.
Recommended Citation
Amelia S. McGowan,
Cruel Deference: State Narratives, Credibility, and Power in Convention Against Torture Adjudications,
70
St. Louis U. L.J.
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol70/iss4/5