By Melanie Nathan, May 28, 2026.
After years in the field, I now spend many of my days researching how to stop governments, mobs, police, prisons, and even families from destroying human beings. Then I open social media and strangers inform me that I am a monster because I am a Jew.
Let us wind back: People often ask me what a country conditions expert witness actually does. For me its been a side gig which has become almost full time – courtesy Trump era deportation chaos.
A country conditions expert is someone qualified through years of research, advocacy, fieldwork, reporting, authorship, scholarship, and specialized knowledge to provide courts with an informed, evidence-based understanding of conditions in a particular country. We explain what may happen to a person if they are deported back to their home country. We analyze laws, enforcement patterns, social conditions, political realities, cultural dynamics, state protection failures, healthcare access, violence, detention conditions, stigma, corruption, and persecution.
In asylum cases, especially LGBTQI+ asylum cases, country conditions evidence can mean the difference between life and death.
In addition to my work directing African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC), I provide country conditions expert witness reporting regarding approximately twenty African countries, primarily for LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in the United States and abroad. My reports are used in immigration courts, federal proceedings, detention matters, emergency deportation stays, and appeals. Some reports exceed one hundred pages. Many must be completed urgently, sometimes within days , because someone is sitting in detention awaiting deportation.
When it comes to reporting on country conditions, I must maintain neutrality. That is one of the most misunderstood aspects of this work. My obligation is not to tell a court what outcome I emotionally desire. My obligation is to tell the truth as comprehensively, and responsibly as possible. That means exploring all sides of an issue. It means constantly updating my research, reassessing sources, monitoring developments daily, and being willing to modify prior opinions when evidence changes. It means reading government reports, NGO findings, legislation, local media, academic analysis, court judgments, activist documentation, police conduct reports, AHRC intake data, healthcare data, religious rhetoric, vigilante activity, and social media trends, all at once. It means topping up constantly with truth and knowledge.
It took decades to become an expert, by developing depth of understanding so layered that you can explain how the society and laws function in practice, how enforcement of law, or lack thereof, impacts society, what risks emerge from social exposure, how family systems operate, how stigma and taboo manifests, similarly or differently in urban versus rural environments, how deportation itself creates suspicion, and what risks a lesbian in Cameroon may face, or a a gay man in Senegal, or a trans activist in Uganda, assessing it down to the percentage of likelihood that they may experience torture, to qualify for protection under the Convention Against Torture .
The demand of the work requires availability bordering on permanent mobilization. And during the Trump administration, that reality became nearly unbearable.
The chaos created by the administration, much of it entirely unnecessary, flooded the system with volume, confusion, unpredictability, and procedural instability and also Judges robbed of discretion. Pretermission motions multiplied. Expedited proceedings accelerated. Detention expanded. Policies changed constantly. Government attorneys and Judges were fired or reassigned. Courts became overloaded. Calendars became impossible. Hearing dates moved and moved again and again – and again – like roulette wheels, landing on a number I had to accept…
I lost control over my own life.
A case scheduled for January 2025 suddenly gets postponed to March 2026. By then, the entire country landscape may have changed. Burkina Faso went from no LGBT criminalization to new laws that send gays, lesbians and trans people to jail. Ghana is about to criminalize identity – in 2022 they did not. Ugandans now persecute with “the Kill the Gays bill” – whereas in 2020 they did not! The list goes on. I must re-research the asylum case from the ground up, through the years. Re-read the record. Re-study developments. Reassess laws, arrests, political shifts, vigilante violence, healthcare access, media narratives, and enforcement patterns and examine and document the harms. Then comes an entire afternoon of attorney preparation, only to be repeated – again and again – with each postponement. And the postponements per case are numerous. I clear my schedule, show up in court, prepare mentally to testify for hours under oath…… only to sit all day waiting, cramming my brain with more in anticipation of cross examination ….. then the judge runs out of time. Postponed again. Months more. Research more… prepare again …. and this can go on for years. I have one case pushed out to 2028.
In several cases, we arrive for court – mostly on Webex (thank-you Covid) – and at times not- only to be told the judge is too overloaded and cannot hear the matter. Everyone packs up their files, exhaustion written across faces, and we begin the entire cycle again months later. Yes I repeat – to help you get the feel of it….
Talk about exhaustion – there was that time when I flew from San Francisco to an El Paso detention Center only for the Judge not to show up – the 110 degree heat. I returned 3 months later. (total travel away time – 6 days – .. .
Now imagine sixty ongoing cases …. the juggling…
Then there are the real victims – human beings suspended in legal purgatory. And the worst part is not my exhaustion. The worst part is theirs. The asylum seeker. The detainee. The person whose entire life is frozen inside hostile bureaucratic uncertainty.
Some sit in detention facilities wondering whether they will survive deportation. Some cannot work legally. Some cannot reunite with family. Some spiral psychologically from uncertainty and fear. Some become homeless. Some disappear into despair. Many are re-traumatized- having to retell their horror stories again and again – forced – repeatedly by a system that demands they relive persecution over and over while postponing resolution indefinitely.
The process itself becomes dehumanizing. And all the while, funding disappears. Resources shrink. Attorneys burn out. Organizations collapse under pressure. And as for Experts – just check me out!
Often times not paid … sometimes partially paid…. or wait endlessly to be paid and absorb the loss because the case simply must be done.
I am exhausted. Depleted. And I am not young. I remain determined not to drop – Because when someone facing imprisonment, torture, forced anal exams, corrective rape, forced marriage, mob violence, blackmail, or death needs my expertise, what exactly is the acceptable response? That I am tired? That the system is unfair? That the invoice remains unpaid?
Are you exhausted reading this?
And then lands the other layer of exhaustion — the one people rarely see. This has taken on a new dimension in recent years. I do this work while Jewish – because I am – and while a Zionist – because I am. That comes with being attacked, whether giving speeches on a Pride stage, commenting online, walking into a building – its constant.
Apparently, according to strangers on the internet, I have no right to call myself a human rights lawyer. After all I must be a “baby killer.” – “ A colonizer.” “A fraud.” Then there is the: “all Zionists are liars” such as by the woman who lied about Jews making Aliya while pronouncing the word Aliyah as “A-LIAR“. Can’t make that up…..
The list goes on. I am told what I supposedly think, what I supposedly support, what I supposedly feel ….
( What is a Zionist? For those reading this who may not have the correct memo: The Jewish people, like all peoples, have a right to self-determination in their ancestral indigenous homeland. Jewish history, exile, persecution, expulsions, pogroms, and genocide matter. Jewish history is not subject to adjustment or erasure – because it has became politically fashionable to reinvent it.)
For this, I am treated by some as morally contaminated.
I am writing this as more than a rant. It is testimony to an irony I can no longer ignore … it has gone on for years …
Much of my professional life is spent researching, documenting, and explaining the dangers faced by people fleeing persecution from countries across Africa, most of whom just happen to be Muslim. My organization provides emergency shelter, food and medical services to LGBTQI+ people forcibly displaced in and from Muslim majority countries in Africa. This provides me with data that adds to the thousands of hours reading court records, human rights reports, legislation, medical evidence, local journalism, arrest patterns, religious rhetoric, vigilante violence, and social conditions so that our tribunals and adjudicators may better understand the human beings standing before them and the conditions they face if deported.
I am required, professionally and ethically, to research carefully before penning my reports, testifying and forming conclusions …… about others.
Yet those people unhinging ‘baby killer’ at me appear to have spent more time scrolling TikTok than researching a single fact about the subject matter or who I am, what I do, or whom I serve.”
Their certainty is mostly built not on research, nuance, expertise, or direct knowledge, but on slogans, TikTok clips, mythology, projection, and the intoxicating simplicity of collective hatred.
While I have devoted years depicting human beings and countries through evidence, documentation, precision, and understanding, my attackers devote seconds and one click to their conclusions that enable them to indict and convict me.
That contrast reveals something larger than me: No matter the truth, what Jews do, how much nuance we bring, or how much work we perform in service of others, many people have already decided who we are before we speak. And too often, they are guided there by influencers, propagandists, and ideological performers who recruit useful followers to spread slogans, distortions, and lies with the obedience of soldiers. It says something about what happens to human beings ditching responsibility, culpable for the death of complexity and moral certainty , no longer requiring truth and knowledge.
I hope to convey that before condemning anyone, people should try even a fraction of actual research. Hatred built on ignorance is still hatred, no matter who one parrots or how fashionable one tries to make it seem.
Remember, please – that behind every asylum or deportation case is not only the person seeking protection, but an entire network of exhausted human beings trying to keep dignity, due process, and truth alive – and they do it under impossible conditions. And maybe there is a Zionist, a Jew, or two, among them. They have not earned the ignorance, the cruelty – or the hate.
Yes , I am a Jew. Yes, I am a Zionist. Yes, I am a human rights defender. Yes, I am a country conditions expert. And yes , I am exhausted.
Exhaustion is easier to overcome and survive than hatred masquerading as morality.
So to anyone who has slurred, defamed, presumed, projected onto any Jew – consider some research and that may just reveal who YOU are when one click has been enough to fuel your hate.
I rest my case …. next….. !
First published on JEWISH WOMEN ORI: https://wp.me/pghMzR-mV
Melanie Nathan
commissionermnathan@gmail.com
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