In an internal flight alternative decision dated September 15, 2026, the Federal Court dismissed a Mexican family’s judicial review application after finding the Refugee Appeal Division’s assessment was reasonable. The Court upheld the conclusion that the applicants had not shown the Sinaloa Cartel would be motivated to locate them in proposed locations elsewhere in Mexico.
Refugee claim was denied on IFA grounds
The applicants were Mexican citizens. The principal applicant alleged that she and her children feared the Sinaloa Cartel after receiving three WhatsApp messages demanding money and threatening her family in 2022. She said she closed her businesses, changed her telephone number and left Mexico with her children.
The Refugee Protection Division accepted that the principal applicant had been the victim of attempted extortion connected to her business activities, despite identifying credibility concerns in her evidence. It found that the feared harm was criminal activity and that viable internal flight alternatives were available elsewhere in Mexico.
The Refugee Appeal Division dismissed the applicants’ appeal on November 26, 2024. It found that the determinative issue was the availability of internal flight alternatives and did not assess the principal applicant’s credibility concerns.
Court assessed the RAD decision for reasonableness
Justice Benoit M. Duchesne held that the presumptive reasonableness standard applied. The Court stated that the applicants bore the burden of showing shortcomings significant enough to make the RAD’s decision unreasonable and that a reviewing court generally cannot reweigh the evidence considered by the administrative decision-maker.
The Court restated that an internal flight alternative requires both that a claimant not face a serious possibility of persecution or the relevant risk of harm in the proposed location, and that relocation there not be objectively unreasonable in all the circumstances. Once an IFA is identified, the claimant must establish that it is unreasonable.
For the first part of the IFA analysis, the Court noted that claimants must provide sufficient evidence that their agents of harm have both the means and motivation to locate them in the proposed location. For the second part, the threshold is high and requires actual and concrete evidence of conditions that would jeopardize life or safety.
Evidence did not establish cartel motivation
The applicants argued that the RAD minimized evidence of the cartel’s continuing interest in the family. Their evidence included the principal applicant’s belief that the cartel would pursue her because she did not pay, a 2023 note from her husband describing undated calls from unknown numbers asking about her location, and objective country-condition evidence.
The Court found that the RAD reasonably concluded this evidence did not establish, on a balance of probabilities, that the cartel would be motivated to find the applicants in an IFA location. The record did not establish that the principal applicant had substantial knowledge of the cartel’s operations, that pursuing her would offer substantial monetary gain after her businesses closed, or that her complaint to local authorities would lead to an investigation that made her a target.
Justice Duchesne also found it was open to the RAD to treat the limited and vague alleged efforts to locate the principal applicant through family members as indicating a lack of motivation to pursue her in another part of Mexico. The Court added that general country-condition information must have a personal link to the claimant in order to establish the relevant risk or an agent of harm’s motivation.
General crime evidence did not make relocation unreasonable
The applicants also submitted that the RAD had ignored evidence about criminality and cartel operations in the proposed IFA locations, particularly Merida. The Court disagreed, finding that the RAD had considered the country-condition evidence on crime and cartel activity.
The Court held that reports of general criminality and cartel operations in the locations were insufficient, without concrete evidence that relocation would jeopardize the applicants’ lives or safety. It concluded that the RAD’s finding that the proposed locations were reasonable was justified on the evidence before it.
Judicial review dismissed without costs
The Federal Court dismissed the application for judicial review without costs. Neither party proposed a question for certification under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and the Court found that none arose.
The decision does not alter the general IFA test. It illustrates that, in this case, the Court found the RAD’s assessment of the cartel’s motivation and the reasonableness of relocation to be supported by the record.
Source: Federal Court Decisions