A practical guide for immigration attorneys and accredited representatives using Protection Promised as country-conditions and program-context evidence. It connects that record to the legal standards governing asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.
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Protection Promised
The country-conditions and program-context record this Companion is built to be used with. Cite it as evidence; use the Companion to frame the argument.
Written by Shawn VanDiver, U.S. Navy veteran and President and Founder of AfghanEvac, the coalition coordinating with the U.S. government on the relocation and resettlement of Afghan wartime allies.
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The Companion is built to sit beside the special reports and turn their findings into practical guidance: which framework to plead, how the country-conditions record bears on each element, and the procedural questions that recur in Afghan cases.
Nothing in it is legal advice, and nothing substitutes for counsel's own judgment or for individualized evidence. Case law in this area is unsettled and varies by circuit, so every proposition should be checked against controlling authority in the jurisdiction where the case is pending.
What's inside
- The three frameworks at a glance
- Establishing a protected ground and nexus
- Past persecution, the regulatory presumption, and rebuttal
- Well-founded fear without past persecution
- Withholding of removal
- Protection under the Convention Against Torture
- The one-year filing deadline and its exceptions
- Discretion, and adverse characterizations
- Detention, habeas, and bond
- Using Protection Promised as evidence
Who wrote this
An immigration attorney with 23 years of experience in immigration law. He served as a DHS asylum officer under both the Obama and first Trump administrations, was appointed to the immigration bench by the first Trump administration, and sat as an immigration judge for eight years, until he was fired by the second Trump administration in November 2025. He is Executive Vice President of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a Senior Advisor to AfghanEvac.