Supreme Court upholds evidence-based immigrant asylum standards

By Andrew Rice
The Center Square

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on Wednesday, upheld a lower court ruling that required substantial evidence for an asylum application.

The case, Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, focused on a family of Salvadorean nationals who applied for asylum after entering the United States illegally in 2021. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the U.S. government can grant asylum to a noncitizen if it determines they are a refugee.

The act qualifies asylum seekers as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their home country based on a well-grounded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality or political opinion.

Humberto Urias-Orellana cited fears of persecution and threats made by gang members in El Salvador during his families’ asylum application. They pointed to persistent death threats made against himself and his family members. An immigration judge determined that death threats were only viable in asylum claims if they were significant enough to cause actual suffering or harm.

“Because Urias-Orellana ‘only had problems when he returned to his hometown,’ his testimony did not establish a well-founded fear of future persecution,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

The substantial-evidence review standard requires that a decision be upheld if it is supported by evidence that casts significant doubt to support a particular conclusion. The standard revolves around whether a “reasonable mind” would find the evidence in a case supports a particular finding.

“Even accepting his allegations as true, they were not ‘so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution,'” Jackson continued.

The court’s unanimous decision upholds existing standards of immigration law in the United States and keeps decisions consistent throughout the asylum process.