Recent developments in immigration jurisprudence have fundamentally altered the landscape of asylum adjudication in the United States. The combined effect of newly operationalized Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) and the Board of Immigration Appeals’ recent precedent in Matter of C-I-G-M- & L-V-S-G– represents more than isolated policy shifts—they form part of a broader systematic restriction of humanitarian relief that affects both asylum seekers at the border and established parolees already within the United States.
Understanding Asylum Cooperative Agreements
ACAs are bilateral agreements between the United States and designated third countries that allow DHS to transfer asylum seekers to those third countries for refugee processing, rather than adjudicating their claims in U.S. immigration courts. Under INA § 208(a)(2)(A), an alien who arrives in the United States may be ineligible for asylum if they could have applied for protection in a country through which they transited before reaching the U.S., provided that country offers “a full and fair procedure” for determining asylum claims.
These agreements fundamentally shift how asylum claims are processed—from merit-based adjudication to threshold determinations about where claims should be heard. Rather than examining whether an individual faces persecution in their home country, immigration courts now primarily determine whether procedural requirements are met to transfer that individual to a third country for processing.
All currently active ACAs share the same basic structure: they identify categories of “third-country nationals” subject to transfer and establish that the designated country will provide asylum processing. However, recent agreements differ dramatically from earlier frameworks in one critical respect—they no longer require any geographic, cultural, or linguistic connection between the asylum seeker and the receiving country.
The Expanding Map of Removal
This month, the Department of Homeland Security operationalized a robust network of agreements that are now legally enforceable. The active framework currently includes:
• Canada: The scope of this agreement was expanded beyond traditional port-of-entry processing to include irregular entries at the northern border.[1]
• El Salvador: Originally published in 2020 but operationalized for practical enforcement in 2025.[2]
- Honduras: Renewed for active enforcement as of July 2025.[3]
- Guatemala: Re-implemented following earlier operational pauses.[4]
- Uganda: Published September 3, 2025.[5]
- Ecuador: Published November 17, 2025.[6]
The agreements with Canada and Central American nations often rely on the geographic proximity between the asylum seeker’s country of origin and the third country—asylum seekers from Latin America typically transit through these countries en route to the United States. However, the agreements with Uganda and Ecuador mark a significant departure from this framework. They explicitly apply to “third-country nationals” without requiring transit through the designated country or any regional connection whatsoever.
This means, for example, that a Honduran national fleeing cartel violence can now be removed to Uganda, despite having no family, cultural, or linguistic ties to East Africa. The geographic connection that once provided at least a superficial rationale for these transfers has been abandoned entirely.
The Shift from Burden-Sharing to Administrative Transfer
Historically, the “Safe Third Country” concept was based on burden-sharing among countries with comparable refugee protection systems. The 2002 U.S.-Canada agreement, for example, presumed both countries had strong legal protections and similar democratic institutions. Additionally, there was a natural geographic connection—asylum seekers traveling from Latin America to Canada typically transited through the United States, and vice versa.
The landscape in 2025 represents a fundamental departure from this framework. The expansion to countries without traditional geographic ties to respondent populations adds a new dimension to removal defense entirely divorced from the original burden-sharing rationale.
The Limited Scope of Judicial Review
The Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision in Matter of C-I-G-M- & L-V-S-G– cements this operational reality by severely narrowing judicial inquiry in immigration court. That case involved two Honduran nationals—a mother and her minor son—who entered the United States and were placed in removal proceedings. DHS charged them as subject to the U.S.-Honduras ACA and moved to pretermit their asylum applications without a merits hearing.
The BIA held that Immigration Judges have only “limited” authority to determine whether an ACA applies to a particular respondent. Crucially, the Board further held that IJs are precluded from reviewing whether the third country actually offers a “full and fair procedure” for asylum—a determination reserved exclusively for the executive branch.
Instead, the court’s role is reduced to a procedural checklist. Adjudicators must determine:
- Is there an agreement in effect?
- Is the respondent a “third-country national” as defined by the agreement?
- Did the respondent enter the U.S. after the agreement’s effective date?
- Has the respondent ever lived or resided in the third country?
- Does the respondent have any connections to the third country?
If these procedural requirements are met, the underlying asylum application may be pretermitted without a hearing on the merits. The burden then shifts to the respondent to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that they would face persecution or torture in the designated third country—where “designated third country” refers to the nation identified in the ACA as responsible for processing the asylum claim. This creates a high evidentiary bar, particularly for respondents with no prior history in or connection to that nation.
Ongoing Constitutional and Statutory Challenges
However, this framework faces ongoing legal challenges that may fundamentally alter its enforceability. The judicial limitation on review exists alongside continuing litigation about whether these agreements comply with statutory and constitutional requirements in the first place.
These challenges are not new developments. The current implementation represents a continuation of policies first contested in 2020. In U.T. v. Barr, filed January 15, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, six individual asylum seekers—including a gay Salvadoran man threatened by MS-13 and a Honduran mother fleeing domestic violence—along with the Tahirih Justice Center and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, challenged the original ACAs with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.[7]
The plaintiffs argued that these agreements violate the Immigration and Nationality Act because the designated countries do not provide access to a “full and fair procedure” for asylum, which is a statutory prerequisite for Safe Third Country designations under INA § 208(a)(2)(A). They alleged the agreements were arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, pointing to State Department reports documenting violence, corruption, and dysfunctional asylum systems in all three countries.
The litigation history reveals how these policies have evolved across presidential administrations:
- Phase 1 (2020-2024): In February 2021, the Biden administration suspended the original ACAs with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, later formally terminating them. The case was held in abeyance for several years as the challenged agreements were no longer in effect.
- Phase 2 (2025-Present): Following the signing of new ACAs with Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Uganda, and Ecuador in summer 2025, the plaintiffs in U.T. v. Barr moved in September 2025 to lift the stay and file an amended complaint challenging these new agreements. In December 2025, plaintiffs moved to file a second amended complaint adding challenges to agreements with Belize and Liberia.
As of January 2026, U.T. v. Barr remains active litigation and serves as the primary vehicle for challenging the expanded 2025-2026 ACA network. The case now encompasses challenges to what plaintiffs describe as the “geographic absurdity” of sending Latin American nationals to Uganda or Ecuador without any regional, linguistic, or cultural connection—circumstances where the third country designation appears divorced from any rational connection to the asylum seeker’s situation.
For immigration practitioners, this ongoing litigation offers potential avenues for relief. While Matter of C-I-G-M– limits Immigration Judge discretion, the statutory and constitutional challenges in U.T. v. Barr address the fundamental legality of the agreements themselves. Defense attorneys may consider filing motions for administrative closure pending resolution of this litigation, particularly where respondents face removal to countries with documented deficiencies in their asylum systems. Such motions can argue that judicial efficiency favors waiting for district court resolution of whether the agreements comply with statutory requirements before expending resources on individual adjudications under potentially unlawful frameworks.
Substantive Paradoxes in Regional Application
Beyond the geographic absurdity of transcontinental transfers, the application of these agreements creates distinct legal paradoxes even within regions. Immigration practitioners working on Central American cases have documented the complexity of applying the U.S.-Honduras ACA to respondents fleeing gang violence in neighboring nations.
Consider a Guatemalan national fleeing threats from transnational criminal organizations. Under the current framework, that individual may be ordered removed to Honduras—a jurisdiction where the State Department’s own country reports note similar challenges regarding gang activity, corruption, and rule of law. The asylum seeker flees violence in Guatemala only to be sent to a country with comparable or potentially worse conditions.
However, under the constraints of Matter of C-I-G-M-, the Immigration Judge lacks authority to consider this substantive comparability of safety conditions. The “safe third country” designation operates as a binding executive label rather than a judicially reviewable fact, regardless of ground-level realities.
A Systematic Restriction on Humanitarian Relief
This restriction on asylum eligibility does not occur in isolation. It represents one component of a broader coordinated effort to limit access to humanitarian relief in the United States—what might be characterized as a systematic pincer movement operating simultaneously at multiple pressure points.
The term “pincer movement” refers to a military tactic used to surround an adversary by attacking from different directions simultaneously. The analogy is apt when examining current immigration policy where ACAs restrict asylum access at the border while parallel executive actions target the status of individuals already present in the United States under humanitarian programs.
While ACAs redirect asylum seekers arriving at the border through international transfer agreements, the executive branch simultaneously pursues litigation to revoke the status of humanitarian parolees already within the country. The case of Svitlana Doe v. Noem, pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, exemplifies this parallel track. That case challenges the government’s mass revocation of parole for individuals who entered under various humanitarian programs, including Uniting for Ukraine, without individualized assessments or due process protections.[8]
The combined effect is a regulatory environment where pathways to legal status are constricting for both new arrivals and for established parolees who entered legally and are awaiting immigrant visa availability or adjustment of status. The immigration system as a whole is shifting away from individualized adjudication toward categorical exclusion based on diplomatic agreements and executive discretion.
Conclusion: The Changing Nature of Protection
These developments together mark a significant departure from the principles outlined in UNHCR Executive Committee Conclusion No. 15 (1979), which stated that asylum seekers should only be encouraged to request asylum in another country if they have a “connection or close links” with that country.
By severing the necessary link between the asylum seeker and the destination country, the current ACA framework fundamentally transforms the immigration court’s role. The emphasis is no longer on adjudicating the respondent’s flight from persecution but on managing the diplomatic logistics of their removal.
For the immigration bar, this necessitates a strategic pivot. Practitioners must focus less on traditional asylum merits and more on intricate procedural defenses against third-country designation—while remaining vigilant for opportunities presented by ongoing constitutional challenges to the agreements themselves. The legal landscape remains fluid, and the outcome of cases like U.T. v. Barr may fundamentally alter the enforceability of these agreements.
Until then, immigration courts will continue functioning primarily as administrative transfer stations rather than forums for humanitarian protection.
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Abdoul Konare, ESQ. is an immigration attorney and founder of Konare Law, with offices in Frederick, Baltimore, Miami, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.
ENDNOTES
[1] 88 FR 18476 (March 28, 2023).
[2] 85 FR 83482 (December 22, 2020).
[3] 90 FR 35821 (July 2025).
[4] 90 FR 36789 (July 15, 2025).
[5] 90 FR 42597 (September 3, 2025).
[6] 90 FR 51376 (November 17, 2025).
[7] U.T. v. Barr, No. 1:20-cv-00116 (D.D.C. filed Jan. 15, 2020).
[8] Svitlana Doe v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-10495 (D. Mass. 2025).
