Major changes coming to Department of State Human Rights Reports

As I expected, in another step to curtail the right to asylum, the Trump administration will dramatically change the yearly Department of State Human Rights Reports!

The new format hasn’t been presented yet, but the administration plans to do away with the sections on abuses concerning women, indigenous people, disabled people, the LGBTQ+ community, corruption in government, and more.

Asylum officers and immigration judges rest heavily on these reports to make decisions on asylum and other cases. So the implications for asylum applications are extremely serious.

As a country conditions researcher who routinely uses these reports, I’ll have to now reconsider how I use them for attorney clients. There are a few initially thoughts that I think every attorney and country conditions researcher should keep in mind:

Expect future reports to turn a blind eye to a lot of abuses. This means you need to put an extra effort in finding credible sources that document those abuses.
 It also means presenting the information in the most user-friendly and persuasive form possible.

Expect future reports to be highly politicized. Where you see a blatant political agenda behind certain claims in the reports, which will likely be designed to be harmful to asylum seekers, be sure to search for and use evidence that clearly and unequivocally demonstrates the falsity of those claims.

I'll keep monitoring and sharing practical thoughts as this develops. We don't know that much yet, but it's clear that country conditions have become even more important in light of this major new change.