🚨 New! A.G. Barr takes ANOTHER whack at the asylum process, issuing a new precedential decision in Matter of A-C-A-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 84 (A.G. 2020) and giving both immigration judges and the BIA more leeway to deny asylum claims.
Before I go through this latest attack on the asylum process, please enjoy a picture of Petra, who is a Very Good Cat. I hope this softens the blow a tiny bit.
A.G. Barr begins his decision (issued under authority to set precedent in immigration court) by basically saying that the Board of Immigration Appeals hasn't been digging deeply enough in every single case to find ways to deny people asylum. It's hard to read it otherwise.
In the underlying decision, the respondent was found to be credible and to have suffered past persecution on the basis of membership in a particular social group. Because of changed circumstances, the judge found no well-founded fear, but granted humanitarian asylum.
Notably, DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum. Instead, they only appealed the IJ's finding that the respondent was credible and that the IJ shouldn't have found past persecution.
The BIA affirmed the IJ's decision in a very brief order.
Despite the fact that DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum, A.G. Barr believes that the BIA should have evaluated whether or not the IJ should have granted humanitarian asylum anyway.
A.G. Barr lays out here the role he sees the BIA as playing in asylum cases under what he articulate as "de novo review."
Basically, question everything, dig through the record, and find ways to deny applicants.
In the decision, Barr basically tells the BIA to utterly ignore all normal rules of appellate procedure. Who cares if the government didn't raise an issue—or even stipulated to an issue! The BIA should ignore all of that and go digging through the record.
This decision makes even more clear that the immigration courts are fully broken. They have been politicized to death and are now fundamentally incompatible with due process.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Funny they ask this. Here's my effort at jotting down a brief timeline of actions the admin has "done to lower illegal crossings" over the last 3 years. I'm sure I'm missing some things. Some have been successful. Others have been not. But it's wild to claim they haven't tried.
To be clear, I’m neither endorsing these actions nor touting them as grand failures. As I’ve said before, Biden’s record on the border is a mixed bag. But the idea the administration has not taken actions it believes will reduce illegal entries is wrong as a matter of fact.
Take the CHNV deal the Biden admin made in January 2023; Mexico let the US expel more non-Mexicans migrants back across the border in exchange for the US starting a new parole program.
There are serious concerns about both parts. But unlawful crossings are demonstrably down.
He still won’t stop lying about the nature of this program. There are no “gov’s secretive immigrant flights.” There are people who get approved for a government program and have to buy a plane ticket to get here. The “flights” are United, Delta, American, etc…
I’ll also note that @BensmanTodd still refuses to acknowledge the major holes in his story that I pointed out multiple times, including his flagrant misrepresentation about what the government said in response to his FOIA.
@BensmanTodd Bensman’s falsehood-ridden post about the FOIA lawsuit is directly responsible for fueling a massive misinformation campaign about the CHNV parole program, a campaign which has seen US senators spreading wild falsehoods like the existence of “secret charter flights.
Beginning this moment, Texas law enforcement officers can arrest any person in the state they believe crossed illegally. And judges can now order people to walk back into Mexico at threat of 20 years in prison if they don't—even if the person has federal permission to be here.
Crucial context: Barrett and Kavanaugh both say they are not making any decision right now because of the weird procedural posture by which it made it to the Court's shadow docket, but say if the 5th Circuit doesn't act ASAP, they may change their minds.
SO what does this mean? Well, this means SB4 is in effect—for now. But the case is likely going back to the Supreme Court on an emergency poster within the next month, either because the 5th Circuit rules officially on the stay motion, or because they wait too long and don't.
🚨HUGE news. Judge Tipton dismisses the multistate lawsuit against the Biden admin's CHNV parole program, finding that the states do not have standing to sue.
That leaves the program alive for now. Texas will no doubt appeal to the 5th Cir.
Here is the key finding that Judge Tipton made: evidence shows that, after the parole programs went into effect, border crossings by people from the four CHNV countries went down (⬇️).
As he reads 5th Circuit law, since the program was a success, there can't be any injury.
The CHNV parole program represented Biden's big shift to a "carrot and stick" approach.
Mexico lets the US send 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans back across the border each month. In exchange, the US agrees to take 30,000 people a month through parole.
SB4 even goes beyond federal immigration law by allowing the state to prosecute people with green cards if the person was previously been deported and then allowed to reenter legally by the federal government—prob because the people who wrote the law didn't know that was a thing.
Under SB4, any noncitizen who has previously been deported commits a Class A misdemeanor by stepping into Texas—even if they have since legally reentered and obtained permanent legal status. There are no affirmative defenses of lawful presence for the reentry crime.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are thousands of people living in Texas with green cards or other forms of legal immigration status who, at one point in their life, had been deported. If SB4 goes into effect, every one of them risks arrest.
DOJ and the other plaintiffs (private orgs + El Paso gov) win on pretty much every argument.
First, the court finds that SB4 violates the Supremacy Clause, because "it is undisputed that the federal government has a dominant and supreme interest in the field of immigration."
Next, the court finds that SB4's creation of new state crimes of illegal entry and reentry are field preempted, noting that the law "attempt[s] to vest a state with the power to punish federal immigration offenses," which is barred under Arizona v. US (2012).