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Garland’s actions mean that, in the meantime, immigration judges will be free to grant asylum back to individuals based on threats of domestic violence or violence from drug cartels that control large swathes of Central America. Some of whose applications have already been denied can benefit from the Justice Department’s review of cases of individuals who have gone to Federal Court after being denied hearings orders.
Garland’s official decisions disavowing the provisions of the Trump era indicate that previous decisions did not make good sense.
“The opinion begins with a broad statement that ‘victims of private criminal activity’ will only qualify for asylum in possibly ‘exceptional circumstances,'” Garland wrote of Sessions’ 2018 decision restricting asylum in gang-related cases. Against asylum claims based on private behaviour. as a result of, [the ruling] It threatens to cause confusion and discourage the careful adjudication of asylum applications on a case-by-case basis.”
Garland’s comments on Sessions’ ruling on domestic violence were more conservative, noting that his predecessor acknowledged at the time that the position he took “contradicts decisions of many appellate courts that have recognized families as certain social groups.”
These moves, which effectively broaden asylum criteria, carry some political risks for the Biden administration as it struggles to control the wave of migrants crossing the border illegally or presenting themselves at border checkpoints and claiming asylum. Indeed, Garland’s executive order said he was responding with his recent actions and was directly focused on the southern border and immigration from Latin America.
However, immigrant rights advocates hailed the developments as a return to a more humane asylum policy.
“Reversing these harsh decisions is the critical first step to getting back to our humanitarian obligations,” said Kate Melloy-Goytel of the US Immigration Council. We urge the Biden administration to adopt rules that reflect the purpose of our asylum laws – to protect refugees fleeing persecution. The Trump administration’s attempt to limit asylum claims based on gender-based violence, gang violence, and family membership reflected the administration’s focus on demonizing asylum seekers in Central America and closing our nation’s doors to those in need of protection.”
A critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies said Garland’s moves were not surprising, but they did bring the United States closer to an open-door approach to immigration.
“What this indicates is that asylum has the potential to usurp all other immigration laws,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The asylum standard has to be very high and what that represents is a further reduction to that limit.”
“There was a period when any woman from the Islamic world could claim to be part of a particular social group, any woman from China or any man married to a woman from China, because of a forced abortion,” Krikorian said. “It seems that part of the goal here is to approve an increasing share of asylum applications.”
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