The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that federal appeals courts must defer to the findings of immigration courts, rather than do their own fact-finding, when reviewing asylum claims, confirming the federal courts’ limited role in immigration disputes even as courts try to find other ways into immigration cases across the country.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the unanimous opinion for the high court in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, finding that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit used the correct standard of review when evaluating an appeal of a denied asylum petition that had worked its way from immigration courts.
Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, along with his wife and child, entered the United States illegally in 2021 and applied for asylum after being placed in removal proceedings. Urias-Orellana claims he was targeted by a hitman in his native El Salvador, and an immigration judge found his claims credible but denied his asylum claim on the basis that he did not establish past persecution or a fear of future persecution. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the immigration judge’s ruling, and the federal appeals court also affirmed it after reviewing the case using a substantial-evidence standard.
The substantial-evidence standard, used by the federal appeals court, looked at whether an immigration judge’s finding had evidence to support it, deferring nearly all of the fact-finding and evaluation of the person’s asylum claim to the immigration judge’s proceedings. The standard means an appeals court must only determine if there was “such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion,” to uphold an immigration judge’s determination, rather than start the fact-finding process over again at the appeals stage.
Urias-Orellana’s lawyer argued the appeals court should have done its own fact-finding expedition, rather than rely on the immigration judge’s proceedings, when looking at his asylum claim, arguing that the courts “must exercise their own independent judgment in interpreting and applying Section 1101(a)(42)’s legal standard for ‘persecution.’” The Justice Department argued that the appeals court should defer to the immigration court’s determination and use the lower standard of review.
Jackson wrote that the appeals court was correct to defer to the immigration judge’s judgment when reviewing Urias-Orellana’s appeal claims, as is outlined by the Immigration and Nationality Act. She also pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in INS v. Elias-Zacarias, which found that for an appeals court to reverse an immigration judge’s determination, an asylum-seeker “must show that the evidence he presented was so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution.”
“To be sure, Congress amended the INA shortly after our decision. But those amendments—and the addition of §1252(b)(4) in particular—codified the Elias-Zacarias standard,” Jackson wrote. “As such, the statute as it reads today requires substantial-evidence review for the entirety of the persecution determination.”
Jackson’s opinion upholds the limited scope of review that federal appeals courts have in the asylum process, even as illegal immigrants and noncitizen asylum-seekers continue to attempt tactics to get federal courts to weigh in on immigration matters in order to stall their removals.
Federal immigration law removes federal district courts from reviewing immigration determinations and limits the scope of what federal appeals courts may review after an immigration case has made its way through immigration courts. The high court’s ruling further cements those limitations, while also preventing a lengthy fact-finding process from further stalling the asylum process, which serves as one of the major stalling tactics used by illegal immigrants to avoid immediate deportation.
While federal courts are supposed to be largely cut out of or limited in the role they play during deportation proceedings, illegal immigrants have attempted to secure release from detention by filing habeas corpus petitions in federal district courts. The issue of federal district courts ordering illegal immigrants release after they file habeas corpus petitions could be one of the next immigration topics ripe for Supreme Court review, as critics say such petitions represent end-runs around the immigration court system that Congress set up to handle removal proceedings.
One federal appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, has issued an order finding that the Trump administration may keep illegal immigrants detained without a bond hearing, after numerous district courts had ruled against the policy. Appeals of the district court rulings continue to make their way through the federal appeals court, and one case seems poised to reach the justices.
“The Supreme Court is going to have to step in at some point and define what their jurisdiction is, because the statute is written pretty clearly, but it’s never going to be clearly enough to convince a district court judge that he doesn’t have jurisdiction,” Andrew Arthur, the Center for Immigration’s resident fellow in law and policy, previously told the Washington Examiner. “It’s only when the Supreme Court rules that it’s going to make an issue.”
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The Supreme Court also issued a ruling on Wednesday, finding NJ Transit not immune from lawsuits in other states, rejecting the corporation’s claims that it is an entity of the New Jersey government.
The high court is set to announce additional opinions from cases argued this term in the coming weeks, with all rulings for this term expected by the end of June.