Throughout diverse areas of law, the duress doctrine offers a way to understand culpability for criminal conduct, carving out space to reduce blame for those who acted under threat of imminent and severe consequences. Within immigration law, however, the doctrine is utterly incoherent — applicable in some areas (from criminal law to terrorism to Communist party membership), and sharply contested in others (asylum). Someone whom the immigration law defines as a trafficking victim in one context could be barred from immigration status in a different context, only because the law has no consistent understanding of the role or definition of duress. This article contrasts the remarkably consistent definitional approach to duress in both criminal law and international law, with the chaos in immigration law. That chaos is exacerbated by the unusual political power the Attorney General has in setting the course of immigration common law jurisprudence. The article sees this conceptual disarray as further proof of the need for a Congressional remaking of immigration law, and calls for a unified approach to duress within the adjudicatory spheres of immigration.