Individual CAT Eligibility, Family-Case Severance, and the Consequences of Inadequate Appellate Briefing

1. Introduction

Chilingarian v. Blanche concerns the relationship between individual eligibility for protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), the Board of Immigration Appeals’ authority to separate family members’ proceedings, and the requirements for preserving arguments on judicial review.

Petitioners Siranush Chilingarian and her children, Siuzanna and Karen, were dual citizens of Armenia and Russia. They sought protection based on violence and threats directed at their husband and father, Artur Chilingarian, by his politically connected employers. An immigration judge granted all four family members CAT protection against removal to Russia. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), however, determined that the judge had not sufficiently addressed each petitioner’s individual likelihood of torture. It separated their cases from Artur’s, denied their CAT claims, and remanded his claim for further proceedings.

The Tenth Circuit denied the three petitions for review, principally because deficient briefing and express abandonment prevented consideration of most challenges. The one preserved issue—whether separating the cases constituted an abuse of discretion—failed on the merits.

The decision’s central lesson is twofold: family relationships do not create derivative CAT eligibility, and potentially important immigration or constitutional arguments must still be coherently developed and preserved.

2. Background and Procedural History

The alleged threats and mistreatment

Artur testified that he had worked for the wealthy and politically connected Petrosian family for more than fifteen years in Armenia and Russia. During the family’s twelve years in Kaluga, Russia, he worked at a restaurant owned by the Petrosians and at a family member’s mansion.

According to his testimony, the Petrosians prevented him from returning to Armenia through threats of violence. In October 2021, after he requested permission to visit his ill mother, Artavazd Petrosian and three other men kidnapped him and broke his arm. Artavazd warned that similar harm would be inflicted on Artur’s family and son if he disclosed the assault to hospital staff. Several months later, the Chilingarians fled through Mexico and entered the United States.

The immigration judge’s decision

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

The judge found Artur credible. In granting CAT protection against removal to Russia, the judge relied on the Petrosians’ control over his employment and movements, their violence, their government connections, their apparent capacity to locate the family within Russia, and Artur’s knowledge of their operations. The judge also relied on country-condition evidence indicating that Russian authorities would turn a blind eye to future torture.

Critically, the judge assessed Artur’s claim and applied those findings to the other family members rather than providing separate analyses of their individual risks. The judge denied protection against removal to Armenia; those rulings were not appealed and were not challenged before the Tenth Circuit.

The BIA’s intervention

The Department of Homeland Security appealed, arguing that the judge had granted the petitioners CAT protection without independently explaining their eligibility.

The BIA accepted Artur’s credibility but found insufficient individualized findings concerning Siranush, Siuzanna, and Karen. It acknowledged both Artur’s mistreatment and his fear that his family would be targeted. Nevertheless, it concluded that those findings, without additional findings addressing each petitioner’s likelihood of torture, did not establish their individual entitlement to protection.

The BIA severed the proceedings, denied the petitioners’ CAT claims, and ordered removal to Armenia or, alternatively, Russia. Artur’s CAT claim concerning Russia was remanded. Government counsel later explained that his remand concerned further factual development of CAT’s state-action requirement. His ultimate eligibility was not decided by the Tenth Circuit.

3. Summary of the Opinion

Exercising jurisdiction under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a), the court denied all three petitions. Importantly, it did not independently decide that the complete evidentiary record could never support these petitioners’ CAT claims.

4. Analysis

A. Legal Reasoning

Individual CAT eligibility is distinct from derivative asylum status

The court rejected the premise that the petitioners’ CAT claims were legally “derivative” of Artur’s. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(3)(A), qualifying spouses and children may receive asylum derivatively through a successful principal applicant. CAT protection, governed here by 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c), 1208.17, and 1208.18, contains no comparable mechanism.

Consequently, each CAT applicant must establish a particularized risk of future torture. Consolidating family proceedings does not merge the applicants’ substantive burdens or transform evidence sufficient for one person into automatic eligibility for everyone.

That distinction does not make family-based evidence irrelevant. A threat against relatives, violence toward a family member, or evidence of a persecutor’s reach may support several applications. The necessary connection is between the shared evidence and each applicant’s own risk.

Nor did the court hold that each applicant must personally testify. Individualized eligibility and individual testimony are different matters. The opinion expressly recognized that Artur’s testimony could be relevant to the petitioners’ claims.

Severance did not eliminate shared evidence

Under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(4), the BIA may prescribe rules governing its proceedings. Its practice manual permits severance either on request or at the Board’s discretion. The court therefore reviewed the BIA’s decision to separate the cases for abuse of discretion.

Three considerations supported the ruling. First, there was no derivative CAT entitlement requiring the claims to remain together. Second, severance did not prevent consideration of Artur’s account: the BIA expressly discussed his physical mistreatment and his fear that his relatives would be targeted. Third, the objection that the petitioners should have received a remand like Artur challenged the different dispositions, not necessarily the procedural decision to sever.

This last distinction was decisive to the argument’s framing. Even if a party believes that further factual development is necessary, that contention must be presented as a developed challenge to the refusal to remand. It does not, by itself, establish that separating the proceedings was improper.

Appellate briefing must identify and explain the alleged error

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(8)(A) requires an opening brief to state the appellant’s contentions and reasons, supported by relevant authorities and record citations. The court found that the petitioners’ presentation did not satisfy this requirement.

Their descriptions of the issues shifted across the statement of issues, summary, and argument. More importantly, they recited general legal standards without explaining how the BIA’s particular actions violated those standards. The defect was therefore substantive, not simply organizational.

The due process claim illustrated the problem. The petitioners asserted a right to testify and develop the record, but did not identify authority requiring a remand in these circumstances or adequately explain why the BIA’s disposition violated due process. The court declined to construct that constitutional argument for them.

The reply brief could not repair the omission by introducing a different theory directed at the immigration judge’s supposed failure to provide notice. Besides arriving too late, that contention faced the record showing that counsel had declined the judge’s invitation to present further witnesses.

Express abandonment independently narrowed review

The petitioners initially argued that the existing evidence entitled them to CAT protection. In reply, however, they conceded that they had not adequately discharged their burden before the immigration court. Counsel subsequently confirmed at oral argument that they were not arguing that Artur’s testimony automatically satisfied each petitioner’s separate burden.

The court treated the existing-record entitlement argument as abandoned. This is analytically different from inadequate briefing: an argument can be initially presented but later withdrawn through a concession.

The decision leaves significant merits questions unresolved

Because waiver and abandonment controlled most issues, the opinion did not decide whether due process required a remand, whether the BIA correctly evaluated every aspect of the evidence, or whether the petitioners could ultimately establish CAT eligibility on an adequately developed record.

Similarly, the court did not resolve the state-action issue underlying Artur’s remand. References to political connections, official tolerance, and country conditions describe the relevant evidentiary setting; they are not an appellate holding that CAT’s government-involvement requirement was satisfied.

B. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

1. Authorities governing inadequate briefing

• Burke v. Pitts, 157 F.4th 1326, 1342–43 (10th Cir. 2025), supplied the central rule that issues omitted from an opening brief, or inadequately presented there, are treated as abandoned or waived. Its reliance on Sawyers v. Norton, 962 F.3d 1270, 1286 (10th Cir. 2020), and United States v. Walker, 918 F.3d 1134, 1151 (10th Cir. 2019), established that the rule reaches deficient argumentation, not merely complete silence.

• Herrera-Castillo v. Holder, 573 F.3d 1004, 1010 (10th Cir. 2009), was especially important because it applied Rule 28 in judicial review of a BIA decision. There, an extensively discussed equal protection claim still failed because the brief did not identify the specific challenged conduct or explain the constitutional violation. The court used that example to show why the Chilingarians’ general due process discussion did not preserve their claim.

• Burke v. Regalado, 935 F.3d 960, 1014 (10th Cir. 2019), quoting Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099, 1105 (10th Cir. 2007), established that cursory statements unsupported by analysis and case law are insufficient. These authorities supported rejecting conclusory assertions that denial of a remand necessarily violated due process.

• United States v. Clay, 148 F.4th 1181, 1201–02 (10th Cir. 2025), quoting United States v. Wooten, 377 F.3d 1134, 1145 (10th Cir. 2004), reinforced the requirement of developed argumentation. It also established that a reply brief cannot rescue an inadequately argued opening brief. The court characterized the petitioners’ unexplained assertions as a “textbook example” of the problem.

• United States v. Martinez, 92 F.4th 1213, 1233 n.4, 1265 (10th Cir. 2024), served two functions: it supported refusing to consider a new reply-brief argument and emphasized the appellant’s obligation to explain why the challenged decision was wrong. The latter proposition came from Nixon v. City & County of Denver, 784 F.3d 1364, 1366 (10th Cir. 2015). Together, these cases supported rejecting the disjointed challenge to the BIA’s asserted legal error.

• In re Syngenta AG MIR 162 Corn Litig., 61 F.4th 1126, 1181 n.34 (10th Cir. 2023), quoting United States v. Leffler, 942 F.3d 1192, 1197–98 (10th Cir. 2019), explained the institutional purpose of briefing waiver: protecting courts against improvident decisions. That concern carried particular weight because the petitioners sought a constitutional ruling without adequately developing its basis.

2. Authorities governing abandonment

• Maccagnan v. Cherry Creek School Dist. No. 5, 182 F.4th 1169, 1191 n.21 (10th Cir. 2026), illustrated abandonment through a concession in a reply brief. United States v. Elmore, 101 F.4th 1210, 1222 (10th Cir. 2024), supplied the corresponding rule for intentional abandonment at oral argument.

• United States v. Jumaev, 20 F.4th 518, 546 n.14 (10th Cir. 2021), supported the general practice of not considering abandoned arguments. United States v. Carel, 668 F.3d 1211, 1216 n.7 (10th Cir. 2011), supported the court’s specific refusal to address the petitioners’ withdrawn claim that the existing record established CAT entitlement.

3. Authorities that did not adequately support the petitioners’ theories

• Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 267–68 (1970), concerned procedural protections before termination of welfare benefits. The court did not reject its general due process significance; it found that the petitioners had not connected it to a requirement that the BIA remand their CAT claims. The brief also attributed language to the case that the court said did not appear there.

• Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 172 (1952), involved police conduct that “shocked the conscience,” specifically forcibly extracting capsules from a criminal defendant’s stomach. Without a developed explanation connecting that holding to the challenged immigration procedure, its citation did not establish a constitutional violation.

• Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n of the U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983), appeared in the petitioners’ discussion of agency decision-making. The court treated the quoted Administrative Procedure Act standard as part of an unfocused presentation rather than a developed explanation of error under the governing framework. The opinion does not broadly hold that reasoned agency decision-making is irrelevant to immigration review.

4. Authorities addressing individual CAT claims and shared evidence

• Rosas-Garcia v. Bondi, No. 24-9567, 2025 WL 2827216, at *1 n.1 (10th Cir. Oct. 6, 2025) (unpublished), and Tino v. Garland, 13 F.4th 708, 709 n.1 (8th Cir. 2021), supported the proposition that CAT offers no derivative relief. They directly defeated the argument that the petitioners’ relationship to Artur required their CAT proceedings to remain joined.

• Lockwood Alvarez v. Garland, No. 20-9502, 2022 WL 3023692, at *4 (10th Cir. Aug. 1, 2022) (unpublished), supplied the requirement that each applicant show a “particularized risk” of future torture. It explained why common family circumstances do not eliminate individual eligibility requirements.

• Moundih v. Bondi, No. 24-9508, 2025 WL 1903790, at *4 (10th Cir. July 10, 2025) (unpublished), supported the complementary proposition that Artur’s testimony could remain relevant to the petitioners’ claims. It helped distinguish individual burdens from artificially isolated evidentiary records.

The opinion expressly acknowledged that unpublished decisions are not binding precedent, but may be considered for persuasive value under the applicable appellate rules.

5. Citation integrity and possible AI-generated errors

The court identified two purported authorities—Sameeh v. Gonzales and Naranjo Garcia v. Garland—as nonexistent. They therefore provided no legal support. They should not be treated as genuine precedents simply because their names appeared in the petitioners’ brief.

In addressing these errors, the court cited Lichfield v. Kubler, 183 F.4th 1248, 1271 (10th Cir. 2026), which quoted Amarsingh v. Frontier Airlines, Inc., No. 24-1391, 2026 WL 352016, at *6 (10th Cir. Feb. 9, 2026) (unpublished). These decisions emphasized that lawyers using artificial intelligence must still exercise independent professional judgment and verify their submissions.

The court said the errors appeared to result from generative AI; it did not conclusively establish their origin. It also criticized counsel’s failure to correct the problems after the government identified one of them. This discussion reinforced concerns about briefing reliability, but the opinion did not announce an AI-specific rule or impose a stated sanction.

C. Potential Impact

Family-based protection claims require an applicant-specific explanation

The decision persuasively reinforces the need to explain how common evidence establishes each relative’s particular risk. Immigration judges and advocates may use shared testimony and country evidence, but should identify its significance for each applicant rather than simply extending the principal applicant’s findings to everyone.

The limitation is equally important: this decision does not require every family member to testify or make threats against relatives legally insufficient. Its point is the absence of automatic derivative CAT eligibility.

Severance challenges must identify a concrete procedural problem

Related applicants may receive different procedural dispositions without that difference alone establishing an abuse of discretion. A stronger severance challenge would need to explain how separation itself impaired adjudication, rather than merely objecting to a relative’s different outcome.

Here, the BIA’s express consideration of Artur’s testimony undermined any suggestion that severance removed the shared evidentiary foundation.

Judicial review depends on preservation, even when the stakes are substantial

The case illustrates how briefing defects can prevent review of removal-related and constitutional issues. A coherent opening brief must identify the challenged act, governing rule, relevant record, and reason the act violated that rule. General invocations of fairness and lengthy quotations do not substitute for that analysis.

Counsel must also distinguish requests for outright protection from requests for further proceedings. Conceding failure to establish eligibility may leave a remand argument available in principle, but only if that separate argument has been properly preserved and developed.

The decision’s influence remains persuasive and bounded

Future courts may find the reasoning useful, but the order does not establish binding circuit precedent. In particular, it should not be cited as resolving the constitutional entitlement to a remand or conclusively determining the substantive sufficiency of these petitioners’ torture claims.

5. Complex Concepts Simplified

Derivative protection

Status received through another person’s successful application. Asylum can provide this benefit to qualifying spouses and children; CAT does not.

Particularized risk

A risk connected to the individual applicant, not merely a general danger or another person’s eligibility. Shared family evidence may help prove that individual risk.

Clear probability of torture

The CAT applicant must generally show that torture is more likely than not upon removal to the relevant country. Fear alone does not establish that probability.

State action or official acquiescence

CAT requires a qualifying connection between the feared torture and public officials, such as official involvement, consent, or acquiescence. The court did not resolve that requirement here.

Consolidation and severance

Consolidation handles related cases together. Severance separates them. Neither procedure changes each applicant’s substantive burden of proof.

Abuse of discretion

A deferential standard asking whether the decision-maker improperly exercised its permitted judgment, rather than whether the reviewing court would have chosen the same procedure.

Briefing waiver and abandonment

Briefing waiver here means losing review by failing to develop an argument properly. Abandonment means later relinquishing an argument, including through a concession.

Remand

Sending a matter back for further proceedings. A remand is not itself a grant of protection.

Country-specific protection

Protection against removal to one country does not necessarily prevent removal to another. The unchallenged denial of protection concerning Armenia therefore remained significant.

Nonprecedential order

A decision that resolves the parties’ dispute but generally does not bind future panels. It may still offer persuasive reasoning, subject to the stated exceptions.

6. Conclusion

Chilingarian v. Blanche reinforces that CAT eligibility is individual, although supporting evidence may be shared across a family. The BIA did not abuse its discretion by separating the proceedings where no derivative CAT entitlement existed and Artur’s testimony remained under consideration.

Most importantly, the petitions failed largely on appellate-preservation grounds. The decision demonstrates that constitutional concerns, disputed agency reasoning, and claims of entitlement to protection cannot receive meaningful review without accurate authorities, developed analysis, and consistent advocacy. Its persuasive significance is substantial, but its nonprecedential status and unresolved merits questions must remain clear.