On July 26, 2019, USCIS acting director Ken Cuccinelli posted online an “ Asylum and Internal Relocation Guidance ” message he previously sent to asylum officers in response to what he calls “a crisis at the southern border.” The message directs asylum officers conducting credible fear screenings of asylum seekers at the southern border to consider whether internal relocation is possible in cases involving private violence. The message urges asylum officers to elicit testimony to determine if the asylum seeker attempted to internally relocate to safe areas before traveling to the United States.
The 2019 Lesson Plan makes it more difficult for asylum seekers to pass the initial credible fear screening by imposing harsher standards. For example, the lesson plan implies that a well-founded fear threshold may actually be higher than 10 percent, even though the Supreme Court has held that a 1 in 10 chance of future persecution is sufficient. 2 For more details on the changes, see the Updated Credible Fear Lesson Plans Comparison Chart developed by AILA and CLINIC.
On September 11, 2019, in a 7-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the government’s application to stay the district court’s preliminary injunction and its September 9 order restoring the nationwide scope of the injunction.
On November 8, 2018, DHS and DOJ issued an interim final rule titled “Aliens Subject to a Bar on Entry under Certain Presidential Proclamations; Procedures for Protection Claims.”. The next day, the president issued a proclamation, “Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States.”.
581 (A.G. 2019), a case in which CLINIC, along with co-counsel, represents Mr. L-E-A-. The narrow holding in the attorney general’s decision is that it “overrule [s] the portion of Matter of L-E-A- discussing whether the proposed particular social group is cognizable.” The partially overruled case is a 2017 Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decision, Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017), which had affirmed the longstanding precedent that family forms the basis of a cognizable particular social group (PSG).
On July 26, 2019, USCIS acting director Ken Cuccinelli posted online an “ Asylum and Internal Relocation Guidance ” message he previously sent to asylum officers in response to what he calls “a crisis at the southern border.”.
The memo, titled “ Updated Procedures for Asylum Applications Filed by Unaccompanied Alien Children ,” reverses a 2013 policy, often referred to as the “Kim memo,” which specified that USCIS took jurisdiction over asylum applications filed by applicants who had previously been determined by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to be “unaccompanied alien children.” The new policy was adopted without advance notice or opportunity for public comment and requires asylum officers to re-determine whether an asylum applicant who had already been found to be an “unaccompanied alien child” continues to meet the statutory definition of that term on the date of filing for asylum. Under the policy, asylum applicants who submitted their filing after they had turned 18, or after reunifying with a parent or legal guardian, face the prospect of having USCIS refuse to decide their asylum applications, even those filed long ago. The new policy forces affected child asylum applicants to raise their claims only in an adversarial immigration court hearing. Affected children would also have to file their application within one year of arriving even though the TVPRA exempts unaccompanied children from the one-year deadline.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed a landmark 2014 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals to rule that fleeing domestic abuse and gang-related violence should not be considered a basis for being granted asylum in the United States, except in rare cases. In a decision published on 11 June 2018, Sessions determined ...
Sessions grouped together as “victims of private criminal activity” those who apply for asylum on the basis of gang violence, along with those who apply on the basis of domestic abuse. He wrote: