Federal appeals courts must defer to immigration judges’ findings on whether asylum-seekers show harms serious enough to qualify for protection, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously.
The opinion authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday came in a dispute over the standard of review under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides refugee or asylum protections when someone shows a well-founded fear of persecution in their native country.
Asylum applicants can appeal denials by immigration judges, but a question presented by this case was whether those determinations are administrative factual findings requiring deference from courts of review.
“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,” Jackson wrote. “Accordingly, we affirm.”
The ruling comes amid a spree of firings of immigration judges by President Donald Trump’s administration as it tries to ramp up deportations. Bloomberg Law reported in early February that new judges are being instructed that asylum should be granted only in rare instances.
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