When “I Think” Disappears: What an Asylum File Can Lose
Why the journey from a spoken account to a written record matters in psychosocial immigration evaluations.
By Venera Bekteshi, PhD, LCSW | Founder, Forward With Dignity
Imagine someone saying: “I think it happened in March. It was after my brother left.”
Now imagine that sentence entering a case timeline as: “The incident occurred in March.”
Months later, the person says it may have been April. The file appears to contain a contradiction. Yet something changed before that later conversation: the written record became more certain than the person had been.
The words “I think” disappeared.
Those two words carried information. They told the listener how much confidence to place in the date. Removing them changed what the statement claimed.
Before seeking a psychological explanation for a discrepancy, we need to understand how the statements being compared entered the record.
The record has a history, too
An asylum file may bring together interview notes, declarations, referral summaries, clinical reports, and timelines. Each document has an author, a purpose, and a relationship to the original conversation. A sentence quoted directly from an applicant and a sentence summarizing several exchanges deserve to be identified accordingly.
For an evaluator, this creates an important question: What, exactly, am I being asked to explain?
Is there a difference between two statements the person made? Between a statement and someone else’s summary? Between an answer to a narrow question and a later answer to a broader one?
Those distinctions shape the assessment. A diagnosis cannot establish what an earlier interviewer asked or whether a summary preserved the applicant’s uncertainty. Those questions require attention to the source material.
This concern has a documented basis. In its 2023 audit of UK asylum screening, UNHCR identified changes to recorded answers and instances in which follow-up questions were omitted from the written account. It also described records that blurred the difference between a question not being asked and an applicant answering “no.” Separately, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ note-taking training emphasizes accurate, objective records of the interview. These sources support examining how a record was produced; they do not establish an error in any particular case.
Three details worth preserving
The opening example concerns certainty. Two other distinctions matter: how the person knows something, and what question they were answering.
Consider these illustrations:
What the person says or is asked
What a shortened record might suggest
What needs to remain visible
“I think it was March.”
March is an established date.
The date was an estimate.
“My sister told me they came back.”
The applicant personally witnessed their return.
The information came from someone else.
“Did they return that night?” “No.”
They never returned.
The answer concerned that night.
In each example, the missing words change the scope of the statement. A careful reader needs to see the original wording where it is available, who recorded it, and whether the applicant had an opportunity to clarify it.
Sometimes that material will be unavailable. The uncertainty should remain visible. An evaluator should not reconstruct a conversation from what would make the present account easier to explain.
Context includes the making of the document
My contextual approach asks us to look at the circumstances surrounding an account as carefully as the words on the page. Here, that means extending the inquiry beyond the applicant to the encounter in which information was gathered.
Suppose a referral says, “The client repeatedly changed her answer.” The useful next step is to identify the exchanges behind that description. What questions were asked? Were they asking about the same event and period? Which answers were recorded directly, and which were summarized later?
The phrase “changed her answer” is already an interpretation. The evaluator needs enough information to examine it.
This is a practical application of the principle at the heart of my CIAS work: context before conclusion. It asks professionals to make their own contribution to the record visible as well: what they asked, what they observed, and where their interpretation begins.
That transparency also protects the independence of the evaluation. The report can distinguish the applicant’s current account, what earlier documents contain, the evaluator’s findings, and what remains unresolved.
A more useful question to bring to an evaluator
“Can trauma explain these inconsistencies?” can be too broad to guide a useful assessment. It can also narrow the inquiry before the relevant evidence has been examined.
A more informative referral would identify the passages at issue and ask:
“These documents record different accounts of the same event. Please assess any relevant psychological factors and explain what the available information supports, including the limits of that assessment.”
Alongside the referral, counsel can identify the source and date of each passage, the questions asked if available, and any known interpretation or recording issues. Relevant material that complicates the initial understanding belongs in that review too.
This gives the evaluator a concrete question without prescribing the answer. The resulting report can contribute independent psychosocial evidence; counsel and adjudicators determine its legal relevance and weight.
Accuracy includes the limits of what someone knows
A well-documented account allows readers to distinguish an estimate from a remembered date, direct experience from information received later, and an observation from an interpretation.
Preserving those distinctions gives the person a more faithful record of what they communicated. It gives professionals a clearer foundation for deciding what needs further investigation.
Sometimes the most consequential detail in a file is a small phrase that should never have been edited away.
For attorneys: Forward With Dignity provides psychosocial immigration evaluations. If questions about a client’s account or psychological functioning have arisen, contact us to discuss the evaluation need, jurisdiction, and deadline. Please wait for secure submission instructions before sending confidential records.