Court unanimously sides with government in immigration dispute

The Supreme Court unanimously sided with the federal government on Wednesday in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, holding in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that federal courts of appeals must use a relatively deferential standard of review when assessing the Board of Immigration Appeals’ determination that asylum seekers did not experience the level of persecution necessary to qualify for asylum protections.

The case stemmed from an asylum request made by Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife Sayra Iliana Gamez-Mejia, and their child, who fled to the United States in 2021 after facing threats of violence in El Salvador. Urias-Orellana contended that the family was eligible for asylum because they had been pursued in El Salvador by a hit man, or sicario, who had shot two of his half-brothers. Men working with this sicario had repeatedly demanded money, Urias-Orellana said, and once physically assaulted him.

In determining whether to grant an asylum request, immigration judges consider whether the applicants came to the U.S. 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,” which is the standard outlined in the Immigration and Nationality Act. A judge ruled that Urias-Orellana’s experiences did not meet this threshold, in part because the family had successfully avoided danger in the past by relocating within El Salvador. The family’s legal team appealed this decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but in 2023, the board upheld the judge’s persecution determination and removal order.

Under the INA, asylum seekers can ask a federal court of appeals to review their asylum claim if the BIA denies it. The family did so, and that request led to the Supreme Court case. The justices agreed to resolve a disagreement between the federal courts of appeals over what standard of review the courts should use when reviewing a persecution determination.

On Wednesday, the court held that the INA requires appellate courts to apply the relatively deferential substantial-evidence standard, meaning, as Jackson explained in the court’s opinion, that reversal of the BIA’s decision is “warranted only ‘if, in reviewing the record as a whole, any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.’”

Jackson noted that the relevant part of the INA “does not use the phrase ‘substantial evidence.’” However, she continued, multiple other phrases in the statute “truncate[] the court’s review,” including Section 1252(b)(4)(B), which states that “the administrative findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” The Supreme Court has previously held that this subsection “prescribe[s] a deferential, ‘substantial-evidence standard’ for review of agency factual findings,” Jackson wrote.

With Wednesday’s ruling, according to Jackson, the Supreme Court also reaffirmed its 1992 holding in INS v. Elias-Zacarias, in which the court determined “that ‘to obtain judicial reversal’ of the agency’s persecution determination, 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.’” Although “Congress amended the INA shortly after” that decision, including to add what is now Section 1252(b)(4)(B), “those amendments … codified the Elias-Zacarias standard,” rather than rejecting it, Jackson wrote.

Based on “the force of Elias-Zacarias and [the statutes’] enactment history,” Jackson concluded, the substantial-evidence standard should apply.