REAL ESTATE AGENTS WANTED:

Immigrants

Appealing

Their

Cases /continued from page 2 enough to merit protection.

Ms. Santos Zacaria appealed to the BIA, which made new findings and denied her claim for a different reason. Ms. Santos Zacaria then appealed her case to the Fifth Circuit, arguing that the BIA had improperly denied her protection by engaging in fact-finding that only the immigration judge could do.

Rather than ruling on the merits of her claim, the Fifth Circuit found that Ms. Santos Zacaria could not bring her case to the court of appeals because she had not first filed a motion to reconsider with the BIA. Ms. Santos Zacaria took the case to the Supreme Court, which heard oral argument in January.

Last week’s ruling means that Ms. Santos Zacaria can continue to fight for protection in the United States. For other noncitizens, it means that they will not have to waste precious time and resources filing an unnecessary motion when the BIA makes a new error.

In a system riddled with hurdles and inefficiencies, the Supreme Court’s decision helps eliminate one unnecessary hurdle for people in the immigration court system. But it is up to Congress to take action to alleviate the immigration court backlog and ensure that noncitizens’ due process rights are protected in a system that is already stacked against them. l

How to Seek Asylum

continued from page 15

Step 13: At the hearing, the judge will do their own review of whether you have demonstrated that you meet an exception to the bar (like the asylum officer did in step 8 and the judge in step 11, if you had to appeal a negative interview result). If they find you do, the judge will determine whether your case would meet the standard for asylum under the normal asylum process. If you win your case, you will be granted asylum. If the judge denies your case, you will be ordered deported.

Step 14: If the judge decides you do not qualify for an exception to the bar, they’ll then review whether you are eligible for withholding of removal, which is harder to win than asylum and offers fewer protections. If the judge finds that you don’t meet that standard, you will be ordered deported.

Step 15: If you do meet the higher standard for withholding of removal, the judge will check one more thing: whether you have a spouse or child with you in court seeking asylum as part of your application who couldn’t independently be granted protection if you were barred from asylum, or a spouse or child who would be eligible to apply to join you in the U.S. if you were given asylum but won’t be able to do so if you’re barred from asylum under the rule. If you do have a spouse or child in those circumstances, you’ll be exempted from the ban on the basis of “family unity” and granted asylum, along with any family members who joined your application. If you don’t, you will be granted withholding of removal.

Complicating things further, many asylum seekers’ interviews in step 6 will be conducted via phone booths in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities. They’ll be held to a higher standard, but it’s still unclear how they will be able to access a lawyer or present evidence. And these higher-stakes, more complicated interviews will be rushed through at the rate of hundreds a day, thanks to extra Department of Homeland Security employees detailed to do these new screening interviews.

It’s a lot of changes to immigration law and policy at once. And there’s little room for an easy transition. With so much happening so fast, it’s not hard to see how humanitarian protection—the whole point of this process, in theory— might instead end up getting lost in the shuffle. l