Immigration · Primary-source case analysis

Nasrallah v. Barr: Courts May Review Facts Underlying a CAT Order

By Aneeta Mishra and Timothy Chan

Published April 21, 2026 · Updated October 17, 2026

Decision: Nasrallah v. Barr, No. 18-1432 (U.S. June 1, 2020).

Can a court review the facts about a person’s risk of torture while a criminal-removal provision limits review of other facts in the same case? Nasrallah answered yes. Its less obvious lesson is that reviewing two orders together does not make them the same order. The Court examined what each order does, how Congress authorized its review and which statutory restriction actually applies.

The Court did not decide whose factual account won

Nasrallah, a Lebanese national who had become a lawful permanent resident, pleaded guilty to two receiving-stolen-property counts and received a 364-day sentence. The immigration judge found him removable but credited past torture by Hezbollah and found a likelihood of future torture in Lebanon. The Board disagreed about that future risk and vacated CAT protection. The Supreme Court described those competing findings without resolving which factual assessment was right. Its June 1, 2020 ruling concerned access to factual review, not a new finding that Nasrallah was entitled to protection. Nasrallah, slip op. at 2–4, 13.

The old Foti formulation did not control

The government argued that all rulings made during removal proceedings belonged to the final removal order. It relied on Foti v. INS, a 1963 case interpreting the older statute. The Court explained why that historical formulation did not control: Congress had since defined a removal order more narrowly, as the determination of deportability or the order directing deportation. A CAT ruling affects the permitted destination without undoing that underlying order. The opinion therefore requires attention to the current statutory definition, rather than treating every older description of a final order as interchangeable. Nasrallah, slip op. at 7–10.

Joint review does not merge the two orders

The Court separately addressed where review comes from. FARRA, the legislation implementing the torture convention, allowed review as part of review of a removal order; the REAL ID Act expressly directed CAT review to the courts of appeals. Those provisions allowed the two issues to travel through the same appellate proceeding without merging their substantive effects. The Court’s analogy was a conviction and sentence reviewed together: A limit on review of one does not automatically attach to the other. Its substantial-evidence standard still requires more than showing that another reader could draw a different inference from the record. Nasrallah, slip op. at 5–11.

The ruling had defined limits

The Court reversed the Eleventh Circuit. It did not reopen every decision made during removal proceedings. It said its ruling did not change review of the discretionary determinations discussed in § 1252(a)(2)(B), and it did not decide the separate statutory-withholding question presented in the government’s argument. Those are descriptions of the boundaries the Court drew in 2020; any present petition must also account for later controlling decisions. For this case, the concrete result was that a criminal-removal review restriction could not, by itself, prevent the court from examining the factual challenge to the CAT order. Nasrallah, slip op. at 12–13.

Questions to separate in the record

• Identify the particular finding challenged: Deportability, likelihood of torture or a different determination.
• Identify the statute authorizing review and the restriction asserted against that particular finding.
• Show why the agency’s inference cannot reasonably stand under substantial-evidence review; a plausible competing interpretation alone is not enough.
• Check later controlling law and the actual review stage. This 2020 opinion is not a complete present-day deadline or filing guide.

Discussed in: Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and CAT: Three Different Standards and Remedies.