Supreme Court Rules Against Ninth Circuit Rule That Granted Asylum To Previously-Denied Illegal Aliens

The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled on Tuesday that federal courts have only a limited role in reviewing immigration judge decisions, overriding a judgment by the Ninth Circuit appeals court that helped illegal migrants seeking asylum obtain relief.

In a 9-0 ruling, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that “nothing in the [Immigration and Nationality Act] contemplates anything like the embellishment the Ninth Circuit has adopted” when deciding that an illegal alien’s testimony in an immigration hearing must be deemed credible and accurate unless an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals specifically indicated otherwise (BIA).

In the majority decision, Gorsuch writes, “The Ninth Circuit’s deemed-true-or-credible rule cannot be reconciled with the INA’s terms.”

Cesar Alcaraz-Enriquez, a Mexican illegal immigrant who had previously been deported, and Ming Dai, a Chinese citizen who had arrived on a B-2 tourist visa, had applied for asylum in the United States.

In Alcaraz-Enriquez’s case, he claimed that he needed asylum in the United States because his life would be endangered in Mexico if he was deported during his hearing before a federal immigration court. According to the evidence in the case, Alcaraz-Enriquez pled no contest to inflicting corporal harm on a spouse or cohabitant in California and was sentenced to two years in jail.

When asked whether this was a “particularly serious crime,” Alcaraz-Enriquez said that he was upset with his 17-year-old girlfriend because he thought she was hurting his kid and which led to him hitting her.

According to a probation report, Alcaraz-Enriquez locked his girlfriend in his room, dragged her back when he found her trying to flee, threatened to kill her, and forced her to have sex with him. Alcaraz-Enriquez later allowed the girlfriend to go, but dragged her out of the house and kicked her as she tumbled down a flight of stairs, according to the probation report. When Alcaraz-Enriquez was arrested a few days later, he confessed to punching his girlfriend in the face and preventing her from leaving the house.

An immigration judge decided that Alcaraz-Enriquez was ineligible for asylum after hearing the case. When Alcaraz-Enriquez appealed his case to the BIA, the board supported the immigration judge’s decision to refuse Alcaraz-Enriquez asylum.

The Ninth Circuit, on the other hand, found that since the BIA had not made a “explicit adverse credibility finding” in Alcaraz-Enriquez’s testimony, they must accept his claim that he was just protecting his daughter when he punched his girlfriend as truthful. As a consequence, the Ninth Circuit asserted it had the power to examine Alcaraz-Enriquez’s denial of asylum on a broad scale.

The Chinese citizens case from the Ninth Circuit

In Dai’s case, the Ninth Circuit maintained an immigration judge’s decision that the Chinese citizen was not qualified for asylum because his testimony contradicted later events.

Dai said he sought refugee status in the United States to escape persecution in China because he tried to prevent authorities from kidnapping and forcing his wife to get an abortion when she became pregnant with their second child.

According to Dai, the authorities assaulted him and imprisoned him, causing him to lose his job, his wife to be demoted, and his daughter to be rejected enrollment to certain schools.

Dai failed to disclose that his wife and daughter had previously been to the United States and voluntarily returned to China before his appearance before an immigration court. Dai acknowledged that his daughter had gone to China for education and that his wife had resumed employment.

When questioned why he did not return to China with his family, Dai said he wanted to “stay here for a bit longer” since “another friend of mine is also here.”

The immigration court denied Dai asylum on these grounds, and the BIA supported the decision. The Ninth Circuit, like the immigration court and the BIA in Alcaraz-Enriquez’s case decided that since the immigration court and the BIA did not make a “explicit adverse credibility finding,” Dai’s evidence on persecution in China had to be considered as credible and genuine. The court overturned the earlier rulings and granted eligibility for Dai’s asylum.

The Supreme Court held that the Ninth Circuit went out of its way, to use “deemed-true-or-credible rule,” to grant Alcaraz-Enriquez and Dai immigration relief while disregarding evidence utilized by an immigration court and the BIA to deny them relief.

“It is long since settled that a reviewing court is ‘generally not free to impose’ additional judge-made procedural requirements on agencies that Congress has not prescribed and the Constitution does not compel,” Gorsuch writes:

“The Ninth Circuit erred by treating credibility as dispositive of both persuasiveness and legal sufficiency in these cases. Even setting aside the credibility of Mr. Alcaraz-Enriquez or Mr. Dai, perhaps the BIA did not find their evidence persuasive or sufficient to meet their burden on essential questions. In Mr. Alcaraz-Enriquez’s case, the probation report may have outweighed his testimony. Similarly, in Mr. Dai’s case, his later admissions about his family’s voluntary return and his decision to stay in this country for economic reasons may have outweighed his initial testimony about his past and feared future persecution. Faced with conflicting evidence, it seems likely that a reasonable adjudicator could find the unfavorable account more persuasive than the favorable version in both cases.”

“Nor can we affirm the Ninth Circuit’s judgments on alternative grounds. The Ninth Circuit failed to consider that the BIA may have implicitly rebutted the presumption of credibility. The Ninth Circuit also erroneously allowed credibility to operate as a trump card, foreclosing the possibility that even credible testimony may be outweighed by other more persuasive evidence or be insufficient to satisfy the burden of proof. Accordingly, the judgments of the Court of Appeals are vacated, and these cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The case is Garland v. Dai, No. 19–1155 in the Supreme Court of the United States.