How a three-decision trilogy and the U.S.–Ecuador Asylum Cooperative Agreement let the government deport a pro se Venezuelan to a country the State Department tells Americans not to enter — by asking the wrong legal question.
A man crosses the border, asks for asylum, and the United States moves to ship him to a country gripped by a declared internal armed conflict — a country it tells its own citizens not to enter. No hearing. No testimony. No chance to prove what waits for him. Just paper.
That is the machine the Board of Immigration Appeals assembled across three decisions: Matter of C-I-G-M- & L-V-S-G-, 29 I&N Dec. 291 (BIA 2025); Matter of H-A-A-V-, 29 I&N Dec. 233 (BIA 2025); and the capstone handed down June 17, 2026, Matter of A-C-M-, 29 I&N Dec. 703 (BIA 2026). Read together — and run through the assembly line of today’s mass “mega-master” calendars — they let an immigration judge invoke the U.S.–Ecuador Asylum Cooperative Agreement, 90 Fed. Reg. 51376 (Nov. 17, 2025), pretermit a Form I-589 on the papers, and order removal to Ecuador before the respondent ever sets foot in a courtroom. The Seventh Circuit will decide whether that survives.
The safe-third-country bar was never meant to be a guillotine. But stacked together, these three decisions let a single immigration judge deny asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture in one paragraph — to a pro se respondent who never had a lawyer — by answering a question the regulation does not ask. The error is clean. It is reviewed de novo. And it is built for the circuit.
👤 The Man They Call a File Number
Call him Daniel. It is not his real name, and the case below is a composite, but every legal move in it is real and happening now in Chicago.
Daniel is twenty-eight, from Maracaibo. He ran a small shop until an armed group — the kind whose members carry police credentials in one pocket and an extortion list in the other — told him to pay or they would shoot up the place. He didn’t pay fast enough. They made good on it. He sold what was left, crossed near El Paso in the fall of 2023, and asked for protection.
A non-lawyer filled out his asylum application in another state. Daniel checked the boxes for a particular social group and for torture. In plain words he wrote that the government and parts of the police were accomplices. Then he waited for the master hearing the court had set him — a date more than a year out.
It never came. The Department of Homeland Security moved to pretermit under the Ecuador agreement. Daniel, with no counsel, filed a handwritten opposition. He said what any frightened person says: I have no family in Ecuador, no status there, no one. The immigration judge read it, found it wanting, and ordered him removed — to Guayaquil — on the papers, more than a year before the hearing the court itself had scheduled.
⚖️ The Ruling, in Plain Language
The safe-third-country bar, INA § 208(a)(2)(A), blocks an asylum application when the noncitizen can be removed under an agreement to a country where his life or freedom would not be threatened on a protected ground and where he would have access to a full and fair procedure. By regulation, the same bar also forecloses withholding of removal under INA § 241(b)(3) and protection under the Convention Against Torture. 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11(h)(4).
Once DHS gives reasonable notice, the burden flips. The respondent must prove, by a preponderance, that he is more likely than not to be persecuted on a protected ground, or tortured, in the receiving country. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1240.8(d), 1240.11(h)(2)(iii); C-I-G-M-, 29 I&N Dec. at 295. The Board calls this a “threshold” inquiry and says the fear assessment will “generally be … abbreviated” where there is “no substantial connection” between the noncitizen and the third country. Id. at 296. H-A-A-V- then permits pretermission without a hearing where there is no material factual dispute and, taking the allegations as true and in the light most favorable to the respondent, no prima facie case. And A-C-M- supplies the kicker: generalized country conditions do not carry the burden; the proof must show an individualized risk to this respondent in the receiving country.
DHS will say the framework is settled and the judge merely applied it. But “abbreviated” is not “absent.” None of the three decisions authorizes what happened to Daniel — collapsing three forms of protection into one sentence and resolving them with a question the regulation never poses.
📑 The three decisions
• Matter of C-I-G-M- & L-V-S-G-, 29 I&N Dec. 291 (BIA 2025) — framework, burden, and standard.
• Matter of H-A-A-V-, 29 I&N Dec. 233 (BIA 2025) — when a judge may pretermit on the papers.
• Matter of A-C-M-, 29 I&N Dec. 703 (BIA 2026) — the individualized-risk requirement.
🎯 What This Actually Does
Stripped to its core, the regulation asks one thing: is this person more likely than not to be persecuted on a protected ground, or tortured, in Ecuador — by anyone there? The immigration judge asked instead whether Daniel’s Venezuelan enemies could find him in Ecuador. That is the wrong question, and for the torture claim it is doubly wrong, because protection under the Convention requires no protected ground and no link to the original persecutor at all.
| ✅ The question the regulation asks | ❌ The question the judge asked |
|---|---|
| Is he more likely than not to be persecuted on a protected ground in Ecuador — by Ecuadorian gangs, security forces, or anyone there? | Could the Venezuelan extortionists who harmed him locate him in Ecuador? (an original-actor nexus the regulation never contains) |
| CAT: Is he more likely than not to be tortured by or with the acquiescence of a public official in Ecuador? No protected ground required. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c), 1208.18. | Folded CAT into the asylum pretermission and disposed of it in a sentence. No separate findings on Ecuador at all. |
| Conditions: an individualized risk tied to this respondent’s profile in the receiving country. A-C-M-, 29 I&N Dec. at 705. | Treated “no family, no status, no support” as insufficient and stopped — from a man with no lawyer to build the record. |
💀 The Fatal Flaws
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The judge asked the wrong question. The order denied protection in part because Daniel did not show that the people who harmed him in Venezuela would know he was in Ecuador, look for him there, or find him there. That imports a nexus to the original actors that 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11(h)(2)(iii) does not contain. The inquiry runs to conditions in Ecuador and to harm from any source there. The error is most stark on torture, which needs no protected ground. This is a pure question of regulatory text, reviewed de novo, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(3)(ii) — the cleanest reversible error in the record.
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No separate torture analysis. The Convention claim is distinct: more likely than not tortured by or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official, 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c), 1208.18. Against Ecuador’s declared internal armed conflict and documented abuses by security forces, that demanded its own findings on the receiving country. The judge made none. Remand follows under the ordinary-remand rule — the reviewing court cannot make those findings in the first instance.
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Papers-only pretermission of a pro se respondent misreads H-A-A-V-. H-A-A-V- arose from a represented respondent whose counsel confirmed that no facts were in dispute and declined to articulate a protected ground. Daniel had no lawyer; a non-attorney prepared his application; and the court resolved a dispositive motion on the papers more than a year before the master hearing it had set. A-C-M- does not bless that — the respondent there had counsel who filed country-conditions evidence, and the Board faulted the evidence as generalized, not the absence of any chance to gather it. Daniel had no such chance. That is a due-process problem and a misapplication of the only case that lets a judge skip the hearing.
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The A-C-M- Catch-22 — and the assembly line. “Generalized conditions are insufficient” is a reason to remand for a pro se respondent who was never equipped to build an individualized record — not a reason to affirm. The Board now demands a tailored evidentiary showing from the very people the system strips of the means to make it. Stage that demand inside a mass “mega-master” calendar, where dispositive motions are decided in bulk, and the deprivation compounds: the hearing disappears at exactly the moment the proof requirement spikes.
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The conditions were real, and the larger attacks are preserved for the circuit. Ecuador has operated under a declared internal armed conflict since January 2024; its homicide rate hit a record in 2025; the State Department rates it Level 2 with Level 4 “Do Not Travel” zones that include part of Guayaquil — the city where removal flights land. The October 2025 reform of its Human Mobility Law created expedited, security-based deportation procedures and, by credible accounts, lets asylum claims be blocked on undisclosed assessments before the merits. The judge brushed all of it aside. The immigration judge and the Board cannot decide whether Ecuador affords a full and fair procedure — that rests with the Attorney General and the Secretary — so the access challenge, the absence of any safety evaluation in 90 Fed. Reg. 51376, and the validity of the 2019 implementing rule, 84 Fed. Reg. 63994 (Nov. 19, 2019), must be raised below to exhaust and preserved for judicial review.
⚖️ Summary Judgment by Another Name
Strip the immigration label off what happened to Daniel and you are left with something the federal courts have governed for forty years: summary judgment. A motion to pretermit under an Asylum Cooperative Agreement does exactly what a Rule 56 motion does — it ends a case before trial on the theory that no material fact is disputed and the non-moving party cannot make out a prima facie claim. H-A-A-V- did not invent that test. It lifted it. The Board’s formula — no genuine factual dispute, the allegations taken as true and viewed in the light most favorable to the respondent, no prima facie case — is the standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, almost word for word.
That borrowing is the opening. Immigration law gives a respondent thin protection against having his case decided on paper. The civil summary-judgment world does not — it is governed by a deep, settled body of due-process law that, until the government built this machine, had no occasion to reach immigration court. If the agency takes the summary-judgment standard, the Seventh Circuit should make it take the summary-judgment safeguards.
| ✅ What Rule 56 requires before judgment | ❌ What the pretermission gave Daniel |
|---|---|
| Judgment only “after adequate time for discovery” and a real opportunity to develop the record. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986). | A dispositive motion decided on the papers more than a year before the master hearing the court itself had set — with no chance to assemble country-conditions proof. |
| The evidence is viewed in the light most favorable to the non-movant; the judge does not weigh it or resolve disputes. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249–50 (1986). | The judge weighed a pro se respondent’s handwritten statement, pronounced it “insufficient,” and decided the case against him on it. |
| A pro se party must receive notice of the nature and consequences of the motion before it is granted. Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100 (7th Cir. 1982); Timms v. Frank, 953 F.2d 281 (7th Cir. 1992). | No lawyer, no warning that one filing could end his case, no plain-language explanation of the proof the motion demanded. |
The contrast cuts deeper because the rest of the administrative state already codified this. Agency after agency wrote summary-decision regulations that adopt the Rule 56 “no genuine issue of material fact” standard together with its protections. Immigration did not. The ACA pretermission is grafted onto 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11 with the lethal half of summary judgment — no fact dispute, no hearing — and none of the protective half. That gap is the argument: a procedure that calls itself a threshold screening cannot impose the consequences of summary judgment while shedding the safeguards that make summary judgment lawful in the first place.
🔗 Borrowed authority (verified)
• Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 — the summary-judgment standard the Board borrowed; the Advisory Committee notes already tell courts to take extra care with pro se litigants.
• 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11 — the ACA pretermission regulation, carrying none of Rule 56’s safeguards.
• Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986) — no judgment before an adequate opportunity to make the record.
• Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100 (7th Cir. 1982), and Timms v. Frank, 953 F.2d 281 (7th Cir. 1992) — a pro se party must be warned before summary judgment ends the case.
🚀 Taking It Up: The Road to the Seventh Circuit
This case is built to be reversed, but only if the record is built to be reviewed. The strategy is not a checklist — it is sequencing.
🧮 How to frame it for the circuit
Lead with the legal-standard error. Frame it as the agency rewriting 8 C.F.R. § 1240.11(h)(2)(iii) to add an original-persecutor nexus the text does not have. It is a question of regulatory interpretation reviewed without deference — the strongest petition-for-review issue and the one least vulnerable to a substantial-evidence shrug.
Pair it with the missing CAT findings. The failure to conduct a separate torture analysis is independently fatal and triggers remand, because the court cannot find facts the agency never reached.
Press due process on the posture, not just the merits. Pro se respondent, a non-lawyer-prepared I-589, a dispositive motion decided on the papers, and no opportunity to develop the record — argue that “abbreviated” under C-I-G-M- cannot mean “no process,” and that H-A-A-V- does not reach the unrepresented. Name the motion for what it is — summary judgment — and demand the safeguards Rule 56 attaches to it.
Exhaust the attacks the agency says it cannot hear. Raise the full-and-fair-procedure challenge and the ultra vires attack on the agreement and the 2019 rule before the Board even though it claims no authority over them — that is how you preserve them. The constitutional and APA challenge rides on the pending federal litigation.
⚖️ The case to watch
The validity of the Asylum Cooperative Agreement framework and the safe-third-country designations is being litigated in U.T. v. Bondi (D.D.C.), formerly U.T. v. Barr. Track the docket and posture — a ruling there can reshape every pretermission like Daniel’s. Confirm the current status before citing.
✅ What To Do Now
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File the EOIR-26 within 30 days and state the wrong-standard and CAT errors with the specificity the rules demand, 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.1(d)(2), 1003.3(b). Reserve nothing.
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Build the individualized country-conditions record now, tied to this respondent — a Venezuelan landing in Guayaquil with no status, family, or support — and pair advocacy sources with State Department, Library of Congress, and UNHCR material to satisfy A-C-M-.
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Raise and preserve the access-to-procedure and ultra vires challenges below, and flag U.T. v. Bondi, so the circuit can reach them.
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On any petition for review, lead with the de novo legal-standard error and the missing CAT findings, and carry the due-process attack on the papers-only posture.
🏁 Where It Goes
The verdict below is removal on paper to a country in armed conflict. The verdict that matters has not been written. The legal-standard error is the kind appellate courts exist to fix — a question of regulatory text, reviewed without deference to the agency’s reading. Build the individualized record A-C-M- now demands, preserve the attacks the agency claims it cannot hear, and put the clean question in front of the Seventh Circuit: did the regulation ever ask whether a man’s old enemies could find him, or whether he will be persecuted or tortured where the government is sending him? Everything turns on the answer.
This post is general legal commentary, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. “Daniel” is a composite hypothetical; any resemblance to a particular individual is coincidental. Citations to Board precedent and the Federal Register reflect sources current as of publication and should be confirmed against the official reporters before reliance. If you face an Asylum Cooperative Agreement pretermission, consult counsel immediately — the appeal deadline is thirty days and does not forgive.
📌 Updates
July 10, 2026
The trilogy becomes a quintet. Two companion decisions land today, both Venezuelans under the U.S.–Ecuador ACA. Matter of N-E-R-S-, 29 I&N Dec. 753 (BIA 2026), holds DHS need not produce an implementing “instrument,” operating procedures, or a “complete set of operative terms and criteria” to place a noncitizen under the agreement — the later instrument is not part of the ACA and is no basis for finding the bar inapplicable. Matter of E-A-R-M-, 29 I&N Dec. 746 (BIA 2026), holds the motion to pretermit itself supplies the required notice. Both arrive as DHS interlocutory appeals, both vacate an immigration judge, both remand — the Board pushing judges toward faster pretermission, not slower.
The upshot. The objection that DHS never laid out the ACA’s operative terms is now foreclosed before the immigration judge and the Board, which is exactly why the access-to-procedure and validity attacks belong in the Seventh Circuit.
June 17, 2026
Decision filed. Matter of A-C-M-, 29 I&N Dec. 703 (BIA 2026), issues today, completing the trilogy and hardening the individualized-risk requirement for safe-third-country pretermissions.
Watch next: the current posture of U.T. v. Bondi (D.D.C.); whether the Board or the courts cabin A-C-M- where the respondent was pro se; and the first petitions for review testing papers-only ACA pretermission in the Seventh Circuit.
This section will be updated as the docket moves and as Ecuador country conditions are refreshed.
