The Supreme Court upheld the standard for reviewing asylum cases, keeping it in the hands of immigration agencies.
Yes, even the leftist justices agreed. 9-0.
“We granted certiorari to determine whether the Court of Appeals applied the appropriate standard of review under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. “We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution.”
In Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, Humberto Urias-Orellana claimed he and his family faced persecution in El Salvador.
The family entered America illegally in 2021:
In support of petitioners’ applications for asylum, Urias-Orellana testified that he was being targeted by a hitman in El Salvador. The Immigration Judge (IJ) found Urias-Orellana’s testimony credible but concluded that it did not establish past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution under the INA. The IJ accordingly denied the petitioners’ asylum applications and ordered their removal. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed. On petition for review, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit also affirmed, holding that, under the substantial-evidence standard of review, the record did not compel a contrary finding.
Immigration judges and the BIA fall under the executive branch.
“Section 1252(b)(4) does not use the phrase ‘substantial
evidence,’” explained Jackson. “But it does specifically address the ‘[s]cope and standard for review’ that the courts of appeals must apply when evaluating IJ and BIA removal orders.”
The section’s subparagraph B applies to this case: “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.”
Jackson admitted that the court of appeals uses “varying standards to the agency’s persecution determination.”
However, the Supreme Court has already “concluded that these determinations receive substantial-evidence review.”
The 9th Circuit wrote in 1994, “Substantial evidence is such relevant evidence as reasonable minds might accept as adequate to support a conclusion even if it is possible to draw two inconsistent conclusions from the evidence.” Maynard v. City of San Jose, 37 F.3d 1396, 1404 (9th Cir. 1994).
Also, Congress already requires the court of appeals to defer to the immigration judge (I omitted the citations) (emphasis mine):
With their focus on the metaphorical trees, we think petitioners have missed the forest. It is certainly true that the required persecution determination turns on more than just the facts: The INA’s legal standard for “persecution” must be applied to the IJ’s findings of fact. But Elias-Zacarias and the subsequent statutory history suggest that Congress meant for the entirety of this kind of “mixed” determination—including both the IJ’s factual findings and the application of the statute to those findings—to receive deference under §1252(b)(4)(B). That makes sense because the overall determination of refugee status primarily requires the IJ to make critical factual findings about a given applicant’s experiences in his country of nationality. And even where, as here, the IJ accepts the applicant’s testimony as true, the IJ must make an antecedent determination on the factual question of the applicant’s credibility. Given that Congress has required the courts of appeals to give significant deference to IJ fact finding throughout §1252(b)(4), it would be anomalous indeed to conclude that courts can review substantially similar persecution-related findings de novo.
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