Internal Flight Alternative Upheld in Colombian Claim

The Federal Court dismissed a Colombian refugee claimant’s judicial review after finding the Refugee Protection Division reasonably concluded that Barranquilla was a viable internal flight alternative. The Court found no reviewable error in the division’s assessment of the unknown agents of harm, safety or the reasonableness of relocation.

Case Summary

• Case & citation: Sarmiento v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 1352, Court file IMM-20342-24.
• Decision date & judge: November 4, 2026, by Justice Andrew D. Little.
• Issue: The applicant challenged an RPD refusal of her protection claim, including its finding that Barranquilla was an internal flight alternative in Colombia.
• Outcome: The application for judicial review was dismissed, and no question was certified for appeal.

RPD accepted the threat but found a safe alternative

The applicant, a Colombian citizen who volunteered for a human rights NGO, based her protection claim principally on an incident in March 2023. Armed men entered her family home in Bucaramanga, threatened her father and left a message that she should leave the city or face consequences.

The RPD accepted that this incident occurred. However, it found that the applicant had not established the identity of the people who made the threat and identified Barranquilla, at least 600 kilometres from Bucaramanga, as an internal flight alternative (IFA).

An IFA assessment addresses whether a claimant would be safe in the proposed location and whether moving there would be reasonable in light of their personal circumstances.

Court found no reviewable error in IFA analysis

Justice Little applied the reasonableness standard of review. The Court’s task was not to reassess the evidence or decide the protection claim anew, but to determine whether the RPD’s reasons were intelligible, transparent and justified in light of the applicable legal and factual constraints.

The Court held that the RPD could reasonably find insufficient evidence identifying the agent of harm. The applicant’s narrative stated that she did not know who the armed men were, and her evidence did not establish that the groups she suspected had made the threat.

That finding was central to the RPD’s assessment of whether the people involved had the motivation, resources or ability to locate the applicant elsewhere in Colombia. The RPD also considered that neither the applicant nor her parents had been approached again after the incident.

The Court found no reviewable error in the RPD’s assessment of the claimant’s profile, the country evidence, her risk of gender-based violence or the reasonableness of Barranquilla as an IFA.

Credibility findings did not change the result

The applicant also challenged the RPD’s treatment of an NGO letter and her evidence about an alleged incident involving her sister. The Court found no reviewable error in those findings.

Regarding the NGO letter, the Court noted that the RPD had a separate reasonable basis for giving it no weight: it repeated the applicant’s allegations, did not add first-hand observations of the armed-men incident and had no probative value on that event.

The Court also declined to reweigh the RPD’s assessment of the applicant’s evidence concerning her sister, including the omission of the alleged incident from her Basis of Claim narrative before the hearing.

Supplementary arguments were rejected

After an adjournment, the parties filed supplementary submissions based on the transcript of the RPD hearing. The applicant argued that the RPD had a closed mind because it did not analyze her membership in a social group or her work as a human rights defender.

The Court disagreed. It found that the applicant’s counsel had agreed at the RPD hearing that there was no nexus under section 96 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and that the RPD had addressed the applicant’s human rights work when assessing the IFA.

This decision concerns the reasonableness of this RPD determination on the evidence before it. The Court did not grant refugee protection or make a new determination of the applicant’s claim.

Source: Federal Court Decisions