Current-law alert · 2025 change
The standard for private-actor persecution was reinstated in 2025
On September 2, 2025, the Attorney General issued Matter of S-S-F-M-, 29 I&N Dec. 207 (A.G. 2025), reinstating Matter of A-B- I, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), and Matter of A-B- II, 28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021), for pending and future cases.
Under that framework, persecution is defined by a breach of the home country's duty to protect its citizens — and to show a government was "unable or unwilling" to control private persecutors, an applicant must show more than the government's failure to prevent or solve a particular crime.
The Board applied that framework in Matter of A-H-D-, 29 I&N Dec. 642 (BIA 2026). Sixth Circuit authority discussed below remains useful, but it is no longer a complete statement of the governing framework. Analysis of a Ghana claim written before September 2025 should be re-examined against the reinstated standard.
Where these cases turn
Two issues that frequently become decisive
1. Was the government unable or unwilling to protect you?
Where the harm came from neighbors, family, or a mob rather than the state, this element must be proved — and under the reinstated framework it requires more than pointing to one unhelpful police encounter.
2. Could you have relocated safely within Ghana?
DHS may raise this, and the regulatory burden is heavier than many applicants expect. See the relocation section below.
The framework
What must be proved
Protected ground
Sexual orientation may establish membership in a cognizable particular social group. Matter of Toboso-Alfonso, 20 I&N Dec. 819, remains precedent recognizing homosexuality as an immutable characteristic supporting such a group.
Persecution on account of that ground
Harm rising to the level of persecution, inflicted because of the protected characteristic — not merely severe harm that happened to occur.
State action
Where the harm came from private individuals: proof the government was unable or unwilling to control them, measured against the home country's duty to protect.
How the government-protection question unfolds at a hearing
Did you report the harm to the police?
The first question, and the one that shapes everything after it.
Yes — you reported
What did the police do? Refuse a report? Mock, threaten, extort, arrest, or expose you? Is there documentation, or a witness who was with you? One police encounter, standing alone, generally does not establish that the government as a whole was unable or unwilling to protect.
No — you didn't report
Why not? Failure to report is not necessarily fatal where the applicant can show reporting would have been futile or dangerous — but that showing must be specific and evidenced, not asserted.
Has the applicant established, through individualized and country evidence, that Ghana was unable or unwilling to control the persecutors?
This is the finding the immigration judge makes in the first instance. Generalized country evidence corroborates it; individualized proof establishes it.
On appeal the question becomes different and far more deferential — whether the record compels a contrary conclusion. That is a standard of review, not the standard the immigration judge applies at your hearing, and confusing the two leads applicants to misjudge what their record needs to contain.
The burden many applicants don't expect
Internal relocation is presumed reasonable
This is an easily underestimated issue in private-actor claims. Applicants and their records frequently treat relocation as a question that might come up. It is a presumption running against the applicant that must be affirmatively rebutted.
Rebutting it means building evidence on the persecutors' reach, whether safety would require concealment, and whether relocation was practically sustainable — housing, employment, support networks, and whether police hostility follows the applicant anywhere in Ghana.
Expect DHS or the immigration judge to ask some version of all of these:
- Did you live elsewhere in Ghana, and for how long?
- Were you threatened or physically harmed there?
- Could the people who harmed you locate you?
- Did you work, travel, or live openly?
- Does the danger exist nationally, or only in one community?
- Would relocating require you to conceal your identity?
- Would housing, employment, family networks, or police hostility make relocation unreasonable?
Authority
The decisions that shape these cases
Reinstated Matter of A-B- I and Matter of A-B- II for pending and future cases, overruling Matter of A-B- III. Under the reinstated framework, persecution is defined by a breach of the home country's duty to protect its citizens, and establishing that a government was unable or unwilling requires more than its failure to prevent or solve a particular crime.
Applying the reinstated Matter of A-B- standard, the Board held that a government's use of recognized conflict-resolution mechanisms does not, without more, show that it condoned the harm or could not control the persecutors — and that where the applicant's family reported an attack and police opened an investigation, the applicant had not shown the government was unable or unwilling to protect him. The decision arose in the Ninth Circuit, so its separate analysis of whether a three-day detention rose to the level of persecution applies that circuit's precedent.
Three holdings, all directly relevant: whether the government is unable or unwilling to protect is a fact-specific inquiry based on all the evidence; a respondent's failure to report harm is not necessarily fatal where reporting would have been futile or dangerous; and adjudicators should not expect a respondent to hide his or her sexual orientation if removed.
A single attempt to report harm by private actors to local police — without further harm from the police themselves, or evidence of their widespread collusion with the alleged persecutors — does not establish that the government as a whole is unable or unwilling to protect a respondent.
A Ghanaian applicant claimed persecution based on political affiliation, not sexual orientation. The court found he failed to establish state action: contradictory evidence about the police response, and his failure to report certain harm, undermined the argument that Ghanaian authorities were unable or unwilling to protect him.
An applicant's failure to report crimes to the police makes it more difficult to show that the government was unable or unwilling to control the criminals.
Asylum was denied where police located the victim, investigated the crime, prosecuted the perpetrators, and obtained substantial prison sentences. The severity of the underlying harm was not in dispute — the government's effective response defeated the state-action element.
A separate analysis
CAT protection is decided differently
Two consequences follow. First, a claim that fails on nexus or social-group grounds is not thereby resolved as to CAT. Second, the government-involvement question is framed differently: acquiescence, including willful blindness by officials, is its own inquiry rather than the "unable or unwilling" standard used in asylum.
In Ghana matters where police participation, extortion, or arbitrary detention is part of the history, the CAT theory sometimes rests on different and occasionally stronger ground than the asylum theory — and it deserves its own development in the record rather than being treated as a fallback.
Context, not prediction
Detroit protection outcomes
Aggregate EOIR data for protection cases decided on the merits in Detroit. These figures span many judges, nationalities, claim types, and years — they describe a court's history, not the odds in any individual case.
4,628 of 16,336
Other protection granted: cases coded in the EOIR administrative data as receiving a merits-based form of protection other than asylum. The underlying aggregate may include statutory withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture; it should not be interpreted as a grant rate for either category individually.
These aggregate figures cover different judges, nationalities, claim types, time periods, and factual circumstances. They do not predict the outcome of any individual case. This page does not publish or analyze outcomes by individual immigration judge, and does not publish firm-level case statistics.
Corroboration
What recent official country evidence documents
The U.S. Department of State's 2023 Ghana Human Rights Report documented conditions directly relevant to these claims:
- Criminalization of certain same-sex sexual conduct
- Police harassment, detention, extortion, and arbitrary arrest
- Police reluctance to investigate violence against LGBTQ people
- Stigma and fear that discouraged victims from reporting abuse
- Frequent and increasingly organized attacks by private citizens
- Public humiliation, eviction, blackmail, and community ostracism
The report noted that a local organization recorded more than 76 attacks against LGBTQ people during the reporting year. A July 2026 State Department travel advisory also warns of violence against lesbian and gay travelers, states that same-sex sexual relationships remain illegal, and reports increased criticism and violence based on sexual orientation.
Building the record
Evidence that addresses the protection element
Depending on the facts, relevant evidence may include:
- Testimony about approaching the police
- Police reports, or proof officers refused to create one
- Evidence police mocked, threatened, arrested, extorted, or exposed the applicant
- Affidavits from witnesses who accompanied the applicant
- Proof of similar police responses to other LGBTQ victims — pattern evidence carries weight a single encounter does not
- Expert testimony on the danger of reporting
- Evidence police themselves participated in the mistreatment
- Documentation of why reporting would have created additional danger
- Country reports connecting police bias to underreporting
- Medical or hospital records of treated injuries
- Evidence on the persecutors' reach beyond the home community
- Proof that safety elsewhere would have required concealment
Common questions
Questions applicants ask
Is being gay enough to win asylum from Ghana?
I never went to the police. Does that end my case?
I did report once and the police did nothing. Is that enough?
I lived somewhere else in Ghana for a while and nothing happened. Is that fatal?
What if my asylum claim fails — is that the end?
Where will my case be heard?
Is my consultation confidential?
How this page was assembled
Methodology and sources
- Attorney General and Board of Immigration Appeals precedent current through August 2026
- Sixth Circuit decisions applying the state-action requirement
- Federal regulations governing internal relocation, 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13
- EOIR administrative case data for the Detroit Immigration Court
- U.S. Department of State country condition reports and travel advisories
What this page does not contain. It does not publish outcome statistics by individual immigration judge, and it does not publish firm-level case statistics or proprietary hearing data. Where the page describes issues that commonly arise at hearing, that reflects practice experience rather than a coded dataset, and it is written that way deliberately. Client names, A-numbers, addresses, incident dates, and identifying narratives are never published.