Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2025-002117

First-tier Tribunal No:
PA/00560/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

On 5th of December 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE RUDDICK

Between

JMMC
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr P. Thoree of Thoree and Co. Solicitors
For the Respondent: Mr. M. Parvar, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 28 November 2025

Order Regarding Anonymity

Pursuant to rule 14 of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, the appellant is granted anonymity. No-one shall publish or reveal any information, including the name or address of the appellant, likely to lead members of the public to identify the appellant. Failure to comply with this order could amount to a contempt of court.

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant appeals with permission against the decision First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) Judge Buckwell (“the Judge”), promulgated on 19 December 2024, dismissing his protection claim, made on 12 February 2022.
2. The FTT made an anonymity order in this case because the appellant has made a claim for international protection. I consider that it is appropriate for that order to continue because the public interest in protecting the confidentiality of the asylum system and in the UK’s compliance with its international obligations outweighs any public interest in the publication of the precise details of this appellant’s identity.
3. The appellant is a citizen of El Salvador, and the Judge accepted his account of the events that led to his flight from that country. This was that he had been a driver for an app-based car-hire service called “Indriver”, and that in January 2022, members of the Mara 18 criminal gang approached him and asked him to do them a “favour”. He suspected that whatever they wanted him to do would be illegal, so he refused, claiming that his care was malfunctioning. They did not believe him and made a number of threats against him. Fearing for his life, he fled the country. His family also received a number of threatening phone calls, leading them to relocate within El Salvador.
4. It is not in dispute that in late March 2022, the government of El Salvador declared a state of emergency and that it has been cracking down on the gangs ever since. The appellant acknowledged this in his appeal evidence but maintained that the crackdown was not entirely successful and he would still be at risk from the gangs. He also said that he would now be at risk of persecution by the government, because he would be wrongly suspected of being a gang member himself.
5. The key questions before the Judge were: whether the Mara 18 gang would still be interested in targeting the appellant if he returned to El Salvador; if so, whether he would be able to seek protection from the police or relocate safely within the country; and whether there was a real risk that the appellant would be subjected to persecution by the government because he would be falsely suspected of being a gang member.
6. The Judge found that the power of criminal gangs had been “vastly reduced” since the appellant fled El Salvador, and that both state protection and internal relocation would be available. He further found that the appellant would not be at real risk of state persecution as an imputed gang member.
7. As agreed at the hearing before me, the sole issue for me to decide is whether the Judge’s assessment of current country conditions was legally flawed. For the reasons set out below, I find that it was not.
Country guidance caselaw
8. On 16 November 2022, the Upper Tribunal promulgated its decision in EMAP (Gang violence – Convention Reason) El Salvador CG [2022] UKUT 00335 (IAC). Because this was designated a “country guidance” decision, the Judge was required to take it into account and to follow it, unless there were “very strong grounds, supported by cogent evidence” that justified not doing so. See, e.g.: SG (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWCA Civ 940 at [47]; Secretary of State for the Home Department v PG [2025] EWCA Civ 133 at [57].
9. The appellant in EMAP claimed to have first come to the attention of the MS-13 gang in 2018 and to have been forced to flee El Salvador in 2019 after he sought police protection against them. The respondent refused his asylum claim in August 2020 but granted him five years’ Humanitarian Protection due to the real risk of serious harm from criminal gangs. The hearing before the Upper Tribunal was heard in April 2022 and June 2022, that is, shortly before and shortly after the declaration of the state of emergency (also referred to as a “State of Exception”) in March 2022. The published documents it considered were written between 2012 and June 2022, and it also heard expert oral evidence.
10. The Upper Tribunal described the country evidence before it as “largely uncontentious” ([7]). For the purposes of this appeal, the relevant facts as set out in the decision included:
(i) The “major gangs” in El Salvador – MS-13 and B-18 – had a presence in 94% of municipalities. They had a significant degree of control across vast areas of the country, where “they subject[ed]t the resident population to “an extraordinary level of social control”: [115]
(ii) The respondent accepted that the state was unable or unwilling to provide protection against them: [112] They had “infiltrated all major branches of government and the security services, at both national and local level.”: [115]
(iii) The gangs pursued political, social and economic aims as well as criminal ones: [116]-[118].
(iv) The “rise of President Bukele […] involved long term strategic negotiations with the gangs”, although their relationship had “soured”: [116]-[117].
(v) In March 2022, the truce between the government and the gangs had “collapsed”, when the gangs engaged in a 72-hour rampage in which 87 people were killed. The government had responded by declaring a state of emergency: [29]
11. Thus, at the time EMAP was promulgated, the government of El Salvador had turned against the gangs, but the respondent did not argue that sufficient protection was available for this reason.
Country conditions in El Salvador at the time of the appellant’s appeal
12. In her refusal decision of 7 December 2023, the respondent relied on a CPIN, El Salvador: Actors of Protection, from February 2021, which pre-dated both the state of emergency and EMAP. It was also largely irrelevant, as it dealt with the issue of state protection against crime more generally, rather than state protection against criminal gangs. More relevantly, the respondent relied on a post-state of emergency CPIN, El Salvador: Gangs, Version 4.0, from December 2022. Based on references to this CPIN, the respondent accepted that a person who failed to comply with the rules or demands of gangs was likely to face persecution. However, she rejected the appellant’s account of being such a person. Alternatively, the fact that the appellant’s family had relocated meant that the appellant would also be able to relocate.
13. It is not clear from the papers before me when the appeal in this case was originally listed for hearing. What is clear that the Judge’s case management was exemplary. He identified that evidence in the public domain suggested that country conditions in El Salvador might have changed significantly since 2022, and that those changes had not been taken into account in the refusal letter or the respondent’s review. He therefore listed the appeal for a case management hearing to ensure that both parties had fully addressed the extent of those changes prior to the full hearing. See: [57]
14. At the hearing, the country evidence before the FTT included the documents relied on by the appellant in a “statement of the case”. Most of this predated March 2022. The exceptions were:
(i) An article from 2 May 2022 (in Spanish), reporting that that the “[t]he current Minister of Defense has previously stated that there are gang members infiltrated within the Armed Forces, but that they cannot be discharged immediately.”
(ii) An article from 11 February 2023 (in Spanish), declaring that Mara-18 was present in Spain;
(iii) An article from 29 May 2023 (in Spanish), entitled “How the pact between the gangs and the government of El Salvador led to Funes' conviction. This reported that Mauricio Funes, a former President of El Salvador, had been sentenced to 14 years in prison because of a pact he had formed with the gangs between 2012 and 2014 (although he had fled to Nicaragua, from where he could not be extradited);
(iv) The US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices: El Salvador, covering events of 2022;
(v) An Amnesty International report, published on 3 April 2023, entitled “El Salvador: One year into state of emergency, authorities are systematically committing human rights violations”;
(vi) An Amnesty International report, published on 5 December 2023, entitled “El Salvador: Policies, practices, and abusive, arbitrary legislation violate human rights and threaten civic space”; and
(vii) An article from the Gurdian, published on 20 February 2023, entitled “El Salvador crackdown breaks the gangs – at huge cost to human rights.”
15. On behalf of the respondent, the FTT had a respondent’s review, completed on 13 August 2024. This included four documents completed by the respondent’s Country Policy and Information Team (CPIT) in response to requests from caseworkers. These documents are not published, but they should be included by the respondent in any appeal bundle if she has relied on them in making a decision that has been appealed. They were:
(i) El Salvador: Returnees, gangs (23 February 2024);
(ii) El Salvador (30 November 2023)
(iii) El Salvador (June 2023)
(iv) El Salvador (April 2022)
The challenged decision
16. In the challenged decision, the Judge set out the positions of the parties ([4]-[5]) and the procedural history of the appeal and preliminary matters ([7]-[10]). He then detailed the appellant’s oral evidence. Because the appellant was unrepresented, the Judge assisted him in setting out his case by asking him a series of open and then clarifying questions. He recorded that the appellant’s evidence was that the actions taken by the government “over the last couple of years” “had been very good and […] had changed radically both the economics […] and the safety of the country”. The appellant supported the government “in general”, but “not in every respect”. The Judge asked him to confirm his current fears on return, and he “acknowledged the changes made, although they had not corrected matters 100 per cent”. Some gang members were still free and innocent people had been imprisoned ([13]-[14]).
17. The appellant’s cross-examination is recorded at [16]-[35]. Much of this went to the appellant’s credibility, which is now accepted. What is relevant now is what the appellant said about current country conditions. He is recorded as saying that there were “lots of gang members still in the country”, although some had left for Guatemala or Honduras. However, “if the government led by President Bukele came to an end, the gangs would resume”: [25] He also said that he now feared that he would be wrongly suspected of being a gang member himself, due to his tattoos and “fairly dark skin”: [30]-[31].
18. The Judge then confirmed with the appellant that his family members had not received any threats since 2022 ([35]), before offering him an opportunity to clarify his evidence. He said that he had been honest about the recent changes in El Salvador, but would still face risks on return because “[t]he problems in El Salvador had not been 100 per cent resolved”: [37]
19. At [39]-[46], the Judge recorded the parties’ submissions.
20. The Judge’s findings are set out at [52]-[64]. At [55], the Judge accepted the appellant’s account as true.
21. At [56], the Judge stated: “It is my overall finding that the outcome of this appeal turns on factors relating to country conditions, which I find to have changed dramatically, particularly in the last two years or so.” Paragraph 57 begins, “When I conducted the CMR hearing in July, I was conscious of the Upper Tribunal decision in EMAP, but I was also aware of the apparent country changes which had been brought about by the practical effect of the actions taken by the government of President Bukele against the gangs.” The Judge then summarised the guidance in EMAP, as well as the sources on which the Upper Tribunal had based its decision. At [59], he referred to the evidence relied on the respondent’s review and explained that he had disregarded the April 2022 as too early.
22. The Judge’s assessment of current country conditions followed. It is clear from context that from [59] to the middle of [62], it is based on the material cited in the CPIT responses. The Judge set out in turn: a brief narrative of Pres. Bukele’s political career since 2019, including that he had been sworn in for a second five-year term in June 2024 ([59]); the origins of the state of emergency, the measures taken (including mass detentions, including of significant numbers of innocent people, 7,000 of whom had been released ([60]); the reduction in the murder rate by 50% in 2022 and 70% in 2023, the detention of 30,000 suspects, and the repeated extension of the state of emergency: ([61]).
23. At [62], the Judge concluded:
“It is my clear finding, as to country conditions and circumstances in respect of the ability of the state to give protection to its citizens, particularly with respect to the former gangs, that in the past two years the country’s circumstances have dramatically altered. The approach led by President Bukele, which, following his successful re-election this year, can reasonably be expected to continue for the near remaining four years of his current term, has brought about a very significant change in terms of the rule of law and the re-establishment of order. The power of the gangs in El Salvador has been vastly reduced.”
24. The Judge then applied that finding to the appellant, and found that he could access state protection on return. The Judge also commended the appellant for his honesty and noted that he supported President Bukele’s work and accepted its success.
25. At [63], the Judge dealt more briefly with the appellant’s fear that the crackdown on the gangs posed a new risk to him:
“I do not find that the appellant himself would be at risk of ill-treatment as a consequence that he might be seen as a gang member himself, for the reasons he referred to in his evidence. He has no past convictions and the authorities would not have reason to suspect him.”
26. At [64]-[69], the Judge summarised his reasons for dismissing the appeal on all grounds.
The grounds of appeal
27. The appellant applied for permission to appeal with the assistance of his current representatives. The grounds are entitled “Grounds for Reconsideration,” and for the most part they are a re-argument of the merits of the appeal. It is asserted that:
(i) “Although the country conditions which motivated the Applicant [sic] to leave […] El Salvador have changed, it is not total and conclusive evidence that the Applicant would be able to obtain protection on return […] this is an assumption by the FTTJ. Although President Bukele’s efforts must be commended it is not conclusive evidence that the Applicant would be protected on his return […] as the country remains dangerous.”
(ii) “[T]he police will not protect him from his persecutors due to his persecutors’ continuing influence and the police force being corrupt. There is an insufficiency of protection for the Applicant on him being return to El Salvador due to the lack of resources to deal with low level violence.”
(iii) It would be “unduly harsh for the Applicant to relocate to another part of El Salvador as his face is known to his persecutors.”
(iv) “[T]he FTTJ erred in law as he failed to exercise great care in assessing the Applicant’s matter given that his evidence was accepted by him and due to [EMAP] confirming that the country is too dangerous for the Applicant to return to due to him being a victim of persecution by the criminal gangs that persist there.”
(v) “[I]t is evidence that he FTTJ used a higher burden than that of the ‘balance of the probabilities’ to assess the Applicant’s appeal.”
28. It is unclear what the “it” referred to a (v) is.
29. The Upper Tribunal granted permission on the grounds that it was “arguable that the judge fell into error by departing from EMAP when there was insufficient before him to justify doing so.”
The hearing
30. On the morning of the hearing before me, I had a series of separate documents that had been before the FTT, as well as a skeleton argument from Mr Parvar dated 27 November 2025. The appellant’s bundle had been filed on 21 November 2024 but was rejected because it was not in compliance with directions. I therefore did not have access to an appellant’s bundle until the morning of the hearing. I note that even then the appellant’s bundle did not contain any of the respondent’s evidence below.
31. After a preliminary discussion, it was agreed that the documents I needed in order to reach my decision were:
(i) The appellant’s 90-page “Reconsideration bundle”;
(ii) The respondent’s 221-page FTT bundle;
(iii) The respondent’s review of 13 August 2025, with accompanying evidence, which totalled 60 pages; and
(iv) The respondent’s skeleton argument.
32. As Mr Thoree had not seen the respondent’s review, I rose for 45 minutes to allow him to consider it. He then confirmed that he was ready to proceed.
33. I then heard submissions from Mr Thoree. In keeping with the multiple references to this appeal as a “reconsideration”, many of his submissions were attempts to reargue the case. With regard to the issue of sufficiency of protection, Mr Thoree submitted that the Judge’s findings were “unclear and irrational”. The lack of clarity was said to arise from the Judge’s failure to identify precisely which paragraphs of the CPIT reports he was relying on. When I asked Mr Thoree to identify what error of law he was pleading here, he said it was a failure to give sufficient reasons.
34. As to irrationality, Mr Thoree relied on the finding at [9] of EMAP that there were “as many as 60,000 gang members in El Salvador, with up to 700,000 others – some 11% of the population of 6.5 million – in some way connected to their activities.” This figure was taken from UNHCR guidelines published in 2016. He argued that even if over 70,000 suspected gang members had been arrested, the meant that 43% of gang members were still “roaming freely”. He also submitted that in a country with a population of 6.5 million, the state would not have the resources to “provide the appellant with protection 24 hours a day”. No rational judge could have concluded that, under these circumstances, there was sufficient evidence to depart from EMAP.
35. Mr Thoree also challenged the Judge’s finding that the appellant would not be at risk of persecution as an imputed gang member as a result of his tattoos. He accepted that the Judge had given a reason for finding that he would not be. This was, essentially, that tattoos alone would not give rise to a risk of persecution, and the state had no other reason to suspect the appellant. He submitted that this was wrong. I asked Mr Thoree how it was open to me to consider the challenge to this finding, as it had not been raised in grounds. He submitted that it was open to me to consider it because “it has come up today”. Alternatively, it was a further demonstration that the Judge’s approach to the evidence had been “selective”.
36. Mr Thoree added that there was evidence before the Judge that returnees who had lived in the US for long periods of time were also viewed with suspicion, and that this should have been taken into account as increasing the risk to the appellant because he had spent two years in the UK. He accepted, however, that this additional risk factor had not been raised below.
37. Mr Parvar relied on his skeleton argument and made additional helpful submissions. He noted that the appellant was not arguing that the FTT had misdirected itself in its approach to EMAP. The appellant’s argument was essentially that no rational judge could have found that this evidence was sufficient to depart from that guidance. He then pointed out that the appellant had raised no challenges to the reliability of the respondent’s evidence below and took me through that evidence, arguing that it was more than sufficient to establish a significant change of circumstances. He accepted that there was evidence that men suspected of gang membership were subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, and that having tattoos was one factor that could give rise to such a suspicion. However, he took me through the evidence that was before the FTT and submitted that it was insufficient to establish that tattoos alone were enough to create a real risk of persecution. He further submitted that any error with regard to this risk was not Robinson obvious and therefore was not before me.
38. At the end of the hearing, I reserved my decision, which I now give with my reasons.
Discussion
39. As noted above, I consider that the Judge’s approach to the country guidance and the updating evidence was exemplary. The Judge identified well before the hearing that neither side had grappled with what appeared to be a significant change in country conditions and case managed the appeal so that both sides had a fair opportunity to do so prior to the hearing. He then gave the appellant a fair opportunity at the hearing to explain his own view of the current country conditions, and to respond to the respondent’s submissions on the issue.
40. In the challenged decision, as summarised above, the Judge set out a brief summary of the relevant findings in EMAP and identified the evidence those findings had been based on. He then identified the updating evidence before him and set out his own summary of that evidence clearly and concisely before explaining why, on the basis of that evidence, departing from EMAP was justified. The appellant does not say that there was any misdirection in law here. Clearly, there was not. The Judge did exactly what was required by SG (Iraq) and PG: he set out the relevant findings in EMAP, carefully considered the evidence those findings had been based on, and then explained why he considered that the updated evidence before him established that there had been a clear and very significant change in circumstances.
41. Although the Judge relied for his findings on the respondent’s evidence, the appellant does not say that this evidence was unreliable or that the appellant’s evidence was substantially different. I have read the Amnesty International evidence cited by the appellant in his statement of the case below, and although it places more emphasis on state human rights abuses than the CPIT reports, it comes to the same overall conclusion with regard to the collapse of the power of the gangs. The Guardian article relied on by the appellant is to the same effect. There was therefore no need for the Judge specifically to mention this evidence (nor does the appellant contend that there was). The Judge also clearly took into account the appellant’s own views, as expressed in his oral evidence. I find that there is no merit to the suggestion that the Judge took a selective approach to the evidence.
42. I further find that it was clearly open to the Judge to reach the finding that the effect of the state of emergency had been to curtail the power of the gangs so significantly that the appellant would be able to obtain state protection or relocate internally. I am not persuaded that the appellant would still be at risk simply because, by Mr Thoree’s mathematical calculation, there are likely to be thousands of people who were formerly involved in gangs who are not at present incarcerated. All of the evidence points to the gangs having been organised criminal groups, such that if tens of thousands of their members and leaders have been imprisoned, it is not irrational to conclude that those who remain at large will be unable to carry on as before. Moreover, the evidence contradicts Mr Thoree’s suggestion. All of the sources concur that the murder rate and the rate of criminality in general has fallen dramatically. The appellant accepted this below. Mr Thoree may be right that the evidence does not conclusively establish that the appellant “will be protected”; he is very likely to be right that the police cannot offer the appellant 24 hour protection. It is trite, however, that this is not the legal standard for sufficiency of protection.
43. I consider that the appellant’s challenge to the finding that he would not be at risk as a suspected gang member is not before me. It was not raised in the grounds and it is not Robinson obvious. Even if it were, I would find that this ground was not made out because the high standard for an irrationality challenge is not met. There was certainly some evidence before the FTT that having tattoos could lead to a man being stopped and interrogated by the police, but the evidence was limited as to whether there was a real risk that, without more, it would lead to treatment rising to the level of persecution. As Mr Parvar pointed out, moreover, at several places in the evidence having tattoos is referred to together with other risk factors, such as having spent a long time in the US or having a criminal record. It was open to the Judge to conclude on the basis of this evidence that tattoos alone were not enough to create a real risk of persecution. If the Judge was in fact wrong about this, it was for lack of detailed evidence, rather than any error on his part.
44. As to the suggestion that the Judge should have considered the appellant’s two years of residence in the UK as a risk factor, this has no basis in the evidence. The relationship between the US and El Salvador is profoundly different to that between the UK and El Salvador; most relevantly, many of the criminal gangs that have ravaged El Salvador in recent years have their original roots in Los Angeles and also operate in the US (as noted in the evidence that was before the FTT). There is no relevant similarity to the UK here. Nor was this issue raised below and therefore there can have been no error in the Judge not dealing with it. See: Lata (FtT: principal controversial issues) [2023] UKUT 00163 (IAC).
45. For these reasons, Judge Buckwell’s decision contained no error of law.
Notice of Decision
Judge Buckwell’s decision of 19 December 2024 is upheld, and the appellant’s appeal is dismissed.

E. Ruddick

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

1 December 2025