In the case of Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, the Supreme Court unanimously decided in favor of the federal government on Wednesday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s opinion stated that federal courts of appeals must use a deferential standard of review when assessing the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination of whether asylum seekers have experienced the degree of persecution necessary to be eligible for asylum protections.
The case started when Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife Sayra Iliana Gamez-Mejia, and their child applied for asylum in 2021 after being threatened with violence in El Salvador.
Urias-Orellana claimed that the family was eligible for asylum because a hitman known as a sicario, who had previously shot two of his half-brothers, was pursuing them in El Salvador. According to the SCOTUS Blog, he claimed that this sicario’s associates had physically attacked him once and repeatedly demanded money from him.
Immigration judges consider whether applicants entered the country because of “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act, when determining whether to grant an asylum request.
A judge determined that Urias-Orellana’s experiences did not satisfy this standard, partly because the family had previously relocated within El Salvador to avoid danger. The family’s legal team filed an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals after this decision.
But in 2023, the board upheld the judge’s ruling regarding persecution and the removal order. “If the BIA rejects an asylum claim, asylum seekers may request that a federal court of appeals review their claim under the INA.” The Supreme Court case resulted from the family’s request. According to SCOTUS Blog, the justices decided to settle a dispute between the federal courts of appeals regarding the standard of review that should be applied when evaluating a determination of persecution.
The INA mandates that appellate courts apply the comparatively deferential substantial-evidence standard, the court decided on Wednesday. Reversing the BIA’s decision is therefore “warranted only ‘if, in reviewing the record as a whole, any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary,'” as Jackson clarified in the court’s decision.
Jackson pointed out that the INA’s pertinent section “does not use the phrase ‘substantial evidence.'” Section 1252(b)(4)(B), which declares that “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary,” is one of several other statutory provisions that, she added, “truncate[] the court’s review.”
According to Jackson, the nation’s highest court has previously ruled that this subsection “prescribe[s] a deferential, ‘substantial-evidence standard’ for review of agency factual findings.”
According to Jackson, the Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday reinforced its 1992 ruling in INS v. Elias-Zacarias, where a majority of justices concluded that “an asylum applicant must show that the evidence he presented was so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution” in order to obtain judicial reversal of the agency’s persecution determination.
Jackson stated in her ruling that although “Congress amended the INA shortly after” that decision, including adding what is now Section 1252(b)(4)(B), “those amendments…” codified the Elias-Zacarias standard rather than rejecting it.
According to her, unless the evidence blatantly contradicts those conclusions, courts are required by law to uphold those findings.
According to Jackson, the agency’s decision is usually “conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.”
Jackson concluded that the substantial-evidence standard must be applied based on “the force of Elias-Zacarias and [the statutes’] enactment history,” according to SCOTUS Blog.
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