Family Ties Do Not Create Derivative CAT Protection: Individualized Risk, Severance, and Appellate Waiver

1. Introduction

In Chilingarian v. Blanche, the Tenth Circuit considered whether three family members could overturn the Board of Immigration Appeals’ denial of protection under the Convention Against Torture, or CAT. The petitioners—Siranush Chilingarian and her children, Siuzanna and Karen—challenged both the denial of protection and the Board’s decision to separate their proceedings from those of their husband and father, Artur.

The case illustrates two distinct requirements. Substantively, CAT protection depends on each applicant’s particularized risk of torture; it does not automatically extend to relatives of a protected applicant. Procedurally, an appellate brief must explain the specific error in the agency’s decision through developed reasoning, relevant authority, and record citations.

The court denied the petitions largely because the petitioners inadequately briefed or abandoned their arguments. It reached the merits only of their severance challenge, concluding that the Board had not abused its discretion. The decision therefore should not be read as resolving the broader constitutional or evidentiary questions that the petitioners failed to preserve.

2. Background and Procedural History

The family’s departure from Russia

The petitioners and Artur were dual citizens of Armenia and Russia. Artur had worked for more than fifteen years as a chef for the wealthy and politically connected Petrosian family, including approximately twelve years in Kaluga, Russia.

According to testimony the immigration judge found credible, the Petrosians restricted Artur’s ability to leave his employment through threats of violence. In October 2021, after he requested permission to return to Armenia to care for his sick mother, his employer and three other men kidnapped him and broke his arm. His employer threatened similar violence against Artur’s family and son if he disclosed the assault to hospital personnel. Several months later, the family fled through Mexico to the United States.

The immigration judge’s decision

Each family member applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection. Artur also identified his wife and children as derivative beneficiaries of his asylum application. The immigration judge consolidated the proceedings and treated Artur as the lead respondent.

The family conceded removability and designated Armenia and Russia as potential removal countries. Artur testified, but counsel declined the opportunity to present additional witnesses when the judge asked whether there were any.

The judge denied asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT protection concerning Armenia. Those adverse determinations were not appealed. However, the judge granted CAT protection against removal to Russia to all four family members.

That ruling rested on the Petrosians’ past violence, their government connections, their ability to locate the family within Russia, and their possible desire to prevent Artur from revealing knowledge of their business dealings. The judge also relied on country information indicating that Russian authorities would turn a blind eye to future torture. Rather than separately evaluating each petitioner’s circumstances, the judge expressly applied the assessment of Artur’s claim to the others.

The Board’s reversal and severance

The Department of Homeland Security appealed, arguing that the judge had not independently analyzed the petitioners’ CAT claims. The Board agreed. Although it accepted Artur’s credibility, it concluded that the judge’s findings did not sufficiently establish each petitioner’s likelihood of future torture.

The Board severed the cases, denied CAT protection to the three petitioners, and ordered their removal to Armenia or, alternatively, Russia. It separately remanded Artur’s case. At oral argument before the Tenth Circuit, government counsel explained that Artur’s remand concerned further factual development of CAT’s state-action requirement.

3. Summary of the Court’s Decision

Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a), the Tenth Circuit denied all three petitions for review.

The distinction between these outcomes is critical: the court did not decide the merits of the waived constitutional and CAT-entitlement arguments.

4. Legal Reasoning

A. An appellate brief must identify and explain the alleged error

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(8)(A) requires an appellant’s argument to present contentions, supporting reasons, relevant authorities, and citations to the record. The court treated those requirements as necessary conditions for meaningful review, not merely matters of presentation.

The petitioners’ legal-error argument shifted between alleging that the Board failed to provide individualized assessments and asserting that it failed to explain the immigration judge’s error. Neither formulation developed into a focused challenge to the Board’s actual rationale: the absence of sufficient findings concerning each applicant’s risk.

Reciting standards of review did not supply the missing analysis. The court emphasized that an appellant’s first task is to explain why the decision under review was wrong. Because the petitioners did not do so, the court declined to construct the argument for them.

B. The due-process theory was not adequately developed

The petitioners asserted that the Board should have remanded their cases so they could testify individually. But they did not identify relevant authority establishing that the Board was required to provide another evidentiary opportunity, nor explain how its failure to do so violated due process in these circumstances.

The record also undermined their later claim that they lacked notice of the need for individual testimony: the immigration judge had expressly offered an opportunity to present additional testimony, which counsel declined. That notice-based theory appeared only in the reply brief and challenged the judge’s conduct rather than the Board’s conduct challenged in the opening brief.

The court therefore declined to reach the constitutional merits. It did not establish that the Board may always deny relief without remand when individualized findings are deficient.

C. Abandonment removed the substantive CAT-entitlement issue

The opening brief argued that Artur’s testimony established the petitioners’ entitlement to protection. The reply brief, however, acknowledged that they had not adequately discharged their burden before the immigration court. Counsel then confirmed at oral argument that they were not arguing that Artur’s testimony automatically satisfied each person’s CAT burden.

The court treated that position as abandonment. Accordingly, it did not decide whether the existing evidence independently established a sufficient likelihood of torture for any petitioner.

D. Individual CAT burdens supported discretionary severance

The Board’s authority to regulate its proceedings arises under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(4). Its practice manual expressly permits severance either on request or at the Board’s discretion. The court therefore reviewed the severance decision for abuse of discretion.

Three considerations supported the Board’s action:

1. CAT protection is not derivative. Unlike asylum under 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(3)(A), CAT does not automatically extend protection to a successful applicant’s spouse or children. Each applicant must establish a particularized risk.
2. Severance did not erase shared evidence. Artur’s testimony remained relevant to the petitioners’ cases. The Board expressly considered both his mistreatment and his fear that his family would be targeted.
3. The remand objection addressed a different decision. The contention that the petitioners deserved the same opportunity for further proceedings as Artur challenged the refusal to remand, not the procedural separation of the cases.

The court consequently found no abuse of discretion. Importantly, individualized proof does not necessarily require separate personal testimony from every applicant. The decision concerns the sufficiency and individualized assessment of evidence, not an inflexible witness requirement.

5. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

A. Inadequate briefing and issue preservation

Burke v. Pitts, 157 F.4th 1326 (10th Cir. 2025); Sawyers v. Norton, 962 F.3d 1270 (10th Cir. 2020); and United States v. Walker, 918 F.3d 1134 (10th Cir. 2019)

These decisions supplied the foundational rule that issues omitted from an opening brief are abandoned or waived, and that inadequately presented arguments receive the same treatment. Their significance was to reject the notion that merely naming an issue preserves it. The petitioners’ references to due process and agency error required substantive development.

Herrera-Castillo v. Holder, 573 F.3d 1004 (10th Cir. 2009)

This was an especially close procedural analogue because it applied Rule 28 to review of a Board decision. There, a lengthy equal-protection discussion failed to identify the specific challenged conduct or explain the constitutional violation. The court used that reasoning here: tangential authorities, broad policy assertions, and generalized rights language did not adequately explain the alleged deprivation.

Burke v. Regalado, 935 F.3d 960 (10th Cir. 2019), and Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099 (10th Cir. 2007)

These authorities establish that cursory statements without supporting analysis and case law do not preserve an issue. They directly informed the rejection of the petitioners’ conclusory assertion that denying another opportunity to testify necessarily violated due process.

United States v. Clay, 148 F.4th 1181 (10th Cir. 2025), and United States v. Wooten, 377 F.3d 1134 (10th Cir. 2004)

These cases reinforce the requirement of developed argumentation rather than perfunctory references. United States v. Clay also established that a reply brief cannot repair inadequate development in the opening brief. The court regarded the unexplained constitutional challenge here as a textbook application of that principle.

United States v. Martinez, 92 F.4th 1213 (10th Cir. 2024), and Nixon v. City & County of Denver, 784 F.3d 1364 (10th Cir. 2015)

United States v. Martinez supported rejecting the new, reply-stage theory that the immigration judge had failed to provide notice. Together with Nixon v. City & County of Denver, it also supplied the central instruction that an appellant must explain why the challenged decision was wrong. Merely reciting review standards did not meet that obligation.

In re Syngenta AG MIR 162 Corn Litig., 61 F.4th 1126 (10th Cir. 2023), and United States v. Leffler, 942 F.3d 1192 (10th Cir. 2019)

These decisions explain the institutional purpose of briefing waiver: protecting courts against improvident or ill-advised rulings. That concern carried particular weight because the petitioners sought a constitutional decision without adequately developing its legal basis.

B. Abandonment after an issue has been raised

Maccagnan v. Cherry Creek School Dist. No. 5, 182 F.4th 1169 (10th Cir. 2026), and United States v. Elmore, 101 F.4th 1210 (10th Cir. 2024)

These cases identify distinct ways to abandon an initially presented argument: concession in a reply brief and intentional withdrawal at oral argument. Both were relevant to the petitioners’ retreat from their assertion that the existing record established CAT eligibility.

United States v. Jumaev, 20 F.4th 518 (10th Cir. 2021), and United States v. Carel, 668 F.3d 1211 (10th Cir. 2011)

These decisions supported declining to decide abandoned arguments. Their role was procedural, not substantive: they explain why the panel did not assess the sufficiency of the petitioners’ CAT evidence after counsel withdrew that issue.

C. Authorities that did not establish the asserted constitutional or agency error

Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970)

This decision concerned constitutionally inadequate procedures for terminating welfare benefits. The petitioners did not explain how it established a required remand in their immigration proceedings. The court also found that language attributed to the decision did not appear in it. The defect was not simply reliance on a case from another field, but failure to connect its reasoning accurately to the challenged action.

Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952)

This case condemned police conduct involving forced extraction of capsules from a criminal defendant’s stomach as conduct that shocked the conscience. The court found it off point: the petitioners supplied no developed explanation connecting that extreme physical intrusion to the Board’s procedural decision.

Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n of the U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29 (1983)

The petitioners invoked its requirement that agencies examine relevant information and explain their decisions. The panel treated that citation as part of an unfocused recital of standards rather than a developed challenge to the Board’s reasoning. The opinion did not broadly displace reasoned-decisionmaking requirements; it found that the petitioners had not shown how the cited principle demonstrated error here.

D. Individualized CAT eligibility and shared family evidence

Rosas-Garcia v. Bondi, No. 24-9567, 2025 WL 2827216 (10th Cir. Oct. 6, 2025), and Tino v. Garland, 13 F.4th 708 (8th Cir. 2021)

These authorities supported the decisive distinction between asylum and CAT: CAT provides no derivative protection for family members. Rosas-Garcia v. Bondi was an unpublished, persuasive Tenth Circuit decision, while Tino v. Garland supplied agreement from another circuit. Together they undermined the petitioners’ argument that severance frustrated an entitlement to family-based CAT relief.

Lockwood Alvarez v. Garland, No. 20-9502, 2022 WL 3023692 (10th Cir. Aug. 1, 2022)

This unpublished decision supplied the requirement of a “particularized risk” of future torture. It helped explain why a common family narrative did not eliminate separate burdens of proof. The panel used it persuasively, not as binding precedent.

Moundih v. Bondi, No. 24-9508, 2025 WL 1903790 (10th Cir. July 10, 2025)

This unpublished authority supported recognizing the relevance of Artur’s testimony to his relatives’ claims. It qualified the individualized-risk principle: separate eligibility determinations do not require ignoring common evidence. The Board’s actual consideration of Artur’s experiences defeated the suggestion that severance itself deprived the petitioners of that evidence.

E. Fabricated citations and counsel’s verification duties

The court identified references to Sameeh v. Gonzales and Naranjo Garcia v. Garland as citations to nonexistent cases. They were therefore not precedents supporting either side’s legal position.

Invoking Lichfield v. Kubler, 183 F.4th 1248 (10th Cir. 2026), and its quotation from Amarsingh v. Frontier Airlines, Inc., No. 24-1391, 2026 WL 352016 (10th Cir. Feb. 9, 2026), the panel warned that attorneys using artificial intelligence remain responsible for applying their own judgment and verifying their submissions.

The panel said the errors appeared to be products of generative AI; it did not definitively establish their origin. It also expressed concern that counsel failed to correct the problems after the government identified one. The opinion imposed no stated sanction, but treated fabricated authorities and inaccurate quotations as serious departures from expected advocacy standards.

6. Potential Impact and Limits

Family-based evidence remains relevant, but protection is individual

The decision persuasively reinforces that consolidation is a procedural convenience, not a substantive entitlement. Family members may rely on overlapping evidence, including threats made through or against another relative, but the evidence must support the required risk finding for each applicant.

The ruling should not be read to require an applicant personally to have suffered past torture. Nor does it establish that one relative’s testimony can never prove another’s future risk. It rejects automatic derivative eligibility, not shared proof.

Severance and remand require separate analysis

The Board may have a permissible reason to separate proceedings even when the parties dispute whether further fact-finding is required. Future challenges should identify the precise procedural decision at issue and explain the resulting prejudice rather than treating severance, evidentiary exclusion, and denial of remand as interchangeable.

Appellate presentation can determine the outcome

The case demonstrates the practical importance of a coherent opening brief. A constitutional label, a collection of legal standards, or repeated disagreement with the agency does not preserve an argument without application to the actual decision. Later concessions can independently remove issues that were initially presented.

The decision leaves important questions unresolved

Because of waiver and abandonment, the opinion does not determine when due process requires remand, whether the petitioners’ evidence otherwise satisfied CAT, or the proper resolution of Artur’s remaining claim. Its nonprecedential status further limits its role: future courts may find its reasoning persuasive, but it does not announce a new binding circuit rule.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

CAT protection

Protection against removal to a country where the applicant is more likely than not to face torture meeting the applicable government-involvement or acquiescence requirements. It is country-specific; protection concerning Russia would not itself establish protection concerning Armenia.

Derivative status

Immigration status obtained through another person’s successful application. Certain spouses and children may receive derivative asylum, but CAT has no equivalent mechanism.

Particularized risk

Evidence showing why this applicant faces the required danger. General country conditions or harm to a relative may contribute to that showing but do not automatically establish it.

Consolidation and severance

Consolidation joins cases for procedural handling; severance separates them. Neither automatically determines what evidence is relevant or who qualifies for relief.

Remand

Sending a case back to a lower decisionmaker for further proceedings. It is different from merely separating one case from another.

Waiver through inadequate briefing

The court’s refusal to consider an issue because the opening brief did not adequately explain or support it. Here, the court used waiver terminology for deficient presentation, not only intentional surrender.

Abandonment

Withdrawal of an argument previously raised, including through a concession in later briefing or an express statement at oral argument.

Abuse-of-discretion review

A deferential form of review asking whether the agency’s discretionary choice was legally permissible, rather than whether the reviewing judges would have made the same choice.

8. Conclusion

Chilingarian v. Blanche reinforces two practical rules: CAT eligibility must be established individually, and appellate challenges must be developed accurately and specifically. The Board could separate the family’s proceedings without excluding their shared evidence, and the petitioners did not establish an abuse of that discretion.

The broader merits remain limited by the grounds of decision. Most challenges failed through inadequate briefing or abandonment, not a substantive ruling against the constitutional or evidentiary theories themselves. The opinion’s principal value is therefore persuasive guidance on individualized CAT claims, procedural precision, and responsible appellate advocacy.