This post shares several insights from AAO T visa opinions involving smuggling and border-related fact patterns. The review draws from decisions in our database issued from 2007 through June 2026 and highlights recurring themes in how the agency analyzes whether conduct occurring during a smuggling operation also constitutes trafficking.

A few recurring patterns in the AAO decisions:

• USCIS often does not dispute that an applicant was threatened, confined, abused, or required to perform labor.
• The denial frequently turns on whether the evidence establishes that subjecting the applicant to involuntary servitude was one of the perpetrator’s purposes.
• The AAO often characterizes cooking, cleaning, carrying backpacks, fetching water, or maintaining a stash house as work performed to further the smuggling operation, house migrants temporarily, avoid detection, or obtain additional payment.
• In many cases, the evidence explains what labor occurred and how the applicant was compelled, but provides less information about why the perpetrators required the labor, whom it benefited, whether the applicant was selected or treated differently, or whether the perpetrators intended the labor to continue.
• Extortion and ransom demands are often treated as the perpetrators’ primary objective, especially when the applicant was released after an additional payment was made.
• Favorable cases tend to include evidence that the labor was separate from or unnecessary to the applicant’s transportation, supported another criminal enterprise, would continue regardless of payment, or was accompanied by statements showing that the perpetrators intended to continue using the applicant’s labor.

Another theme of the severe-form decisions is that the AAO often did not dispute that applicants experienced threats, confinement, violence, sexual assault, or compelled labor. Instead, the analysis frequently turned on the purpose for which the perpetrators engaged in the conduct. In many dismissed cases, the AAO characterized the perpetrators’ principal objective as smuggling, ransom, extortion, robbery, or avoiding detection rather than subjecting the applicant to involuntary servitude or obtaining a commercial sex act.

These distinction and their implications for individual cases are issues we discuss in more depth through technical assistance and during our Legal Working Group calls.

Outcomes in Smuggling and Border Cases

CAST’s AAO Opinion Database includes 181 AAO decisions involving smuggling or border-related fact patterns issued from 2007 through June 2026.

• 143 cases were dismissed.
• 38 cases were remanded.

By primary basis for denial/appeal:

• Severe Form of Trafficking: 148 cases
  • 123 dismissed
  • 25 remanded
• Physical Presence on Account of Trafficking: 28 cases
  • 16 dismissed
  • 12 remanded
• Other primary issues: 5 cases
  • 4 dismissed
  • 1 remanded

The largest concentration of decisions occurred in 2021 and 2022:

• 2021: 33 dismissed and 15 remanded
• 2022: 22 dismissed and 7 remanded
• 2024: 2 dismissed and 4 remanded

A remand does not necessarily mean that the T visa application was approved. It generally means that the AAO returned the matter to USCIS for further review or consideration of unresolved eligibility issues.

These figures reflect published AAO appeals and motions, not all T visa applications adjudicated by USCIS. They should therefore be read as a description of the available AAO decisions rather than as representative approval or denial rates for T visa cases generally.

To review these and other T visa decisions, practitioners can access CAST’s AAO Opinion Database.