Sessions Further Limits US Immigrants: Rules Gang Violence Not Basis For Asylum
by Tyler Durden
Mon, 06/11/2018 - 19:35

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday moved to further restrict the acceptance of asylum seekers and other immigrants to the US by arguing that domestic abuse or the fear of gang violence aren't always acceptable grounds for granting asylum, according to NBC News.

"The asylum statute does not provide redress for all misfortune," Sessions wrote in a formal legal opinion, exercising his authority to overturn decisions by federal immigration judges.

"The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes - such as domestic violence or gang violence - or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime cannot itself establish an asylum claim."

Under US and international law, a person may seek asylum based on past persecution or "a well-founded fear of future persecution" - as long as it's based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in at least one particular social group, NBC News reported.

Sessions

For example, an immigration court ruled back in 2014 that "married women in Guatemala who were unable to leave their relationship" constituted members of one of these groups. By overturning the ruling, Sessions argued that domestic abuse victims didn't have obvious "easily-identifiable characteristics" that qualified them for membership in one of these protected groups.

Earlier Monday, in a speech to Justice Department immigration lawyers in Tysons Corner, Virginia, Sessions said the asylum system is being abused and "was never meant to alleviate all problems, even serious problems, that people face every day all over the world."

As Reuters pointed out, Sessions' ruling will have wide-ranging impacts on asylum seekers in the US. In response, pro-immigration groups issued furious responses. Beth Werlin of the American Immigration Council said it would "result in sending countless mothers and children back to their abusers and criminal gangs."

Meanwhile, the number of asylum claims in the US jumped to 94,000 in 2016 compared with just 5,000 in 2009, of which Sessions said in his earlier speech, only about one-fifth of claims in the past five years have been found to be justified.

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Full DoJ filing below:
https://www.scribd.com/document/38156854...load&from_embed


https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-1...-asylum-seekers

AG Jeff Sessions Resets Obama’s Asylum Expansion
11 Jun 2018

Attorney General Jeff Sessions exercised his authority Monday as the ultimate reviewer of the immigration court system to overrule a series of Obama-era decisions that were allowing the radical expansion of the American asylum system.

Asylum is part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In 1980, it was defined to allow entry to the United States for people who face persecution, typically by their home countries’ governments, for their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Traditionally, the “social group” category was seen as akin to the others, a defined group with identifiable characteristics whose members faced danger and persecution. Asylum was for anti-Communist Afghans who for refused to be drafted into the Soviet occupation’s army, Jehovah’s Witnesses who faced arrest for holding meetings, and so on.

During the Obama administration, certain decisions in the immigration courts and by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) which oversees them began to push the boundaries of the “social group” category. In 2014, after years of court rejecting similar claims, the BIA approved “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” as a social group qualifying for asylum. The case Sessions overruled today expanded that protection to “El Salvadoran women who are unable to leave their domestic relationships where they have children in common.”

Sessions writes in his 31-page opinion:

Zitat

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I reiterate that an applicant for asylum on account of her membership in a purported particular social group must demonstrate: (1) membership in a particular group, which is composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic, is defined with particularity, and is socially distinct within the society in question; (2) that her membership in that group is a central reason for her persecution; and (3) that the alleged harm is inflicted by the government of her home country or by persons that the government is unwilling or unable to control[.]

Coverage of Sessions’s action has focused largely on the specifics of domestic violence victims and women with children, but the ruling has much further reaching implications. In its own terms, it seeks to halt the rapid expansion of the asylum concept to cover victims or even potential victims of regular private criminal activity.

Open borders groups and the immigration bar have for years sought to turn the exception of asylum for persecuted groups into a rule that people more likely to be victims of ordinary crime in their home countries have a right to move to the United States. In 2005, for example, an immigration lawyer unsuccessfully asked a federal appeals court to expand asylum to cover “young, attractive Albanian women,” because they were more likely to be forced into prostitution. In 2011, a lawsuit asked a different court to do the same for people who were “resistant” to gangs.

Sessions’s opinion Monday, Matter of A-B, likely forecloses, for now, this effort to use existing immigration law to force the United States to admit more and more people who enter the country without authorization and claim asylum based on dangers inherent in the less developed countries from which they come.

Monday morning, Sessions announced the decision would be coming at the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) Annual Training Conference for Immigration Judges in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

“The asylum system is being abused to the detriment of the rule of law, sound public policy, and public safety — and to the detriment of people with just claims,” Sessions said in his prepared remarks for the immigration judges, continuing:

Saying a few simple words — claiming a fear of return—is now transforming a straightforward arrest for illegal entry and immediate return into a prolonged legal process, where an alien may be released from custody into the United States and possibly never show up for an immigration hearing. This is a large part of what has been accurately called, “catch and release.”

“Beginning in 2009, more and more aliens who passed an initial USCIS credible fear review were released from custody into the United States pending a full hearing,” Sessions said of the system that led to this year’s “caravan” debacle.

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Sessions explained:

Powerful incentives were created for aliens to come here illegally and claim a fear of return. In effect, word spread that by asserting this fear, they could remain in the United States one way or the other. Far too often, that rumor proved to be true. The results are just what one would expect. The number of illegal entrants has surged. Credible fear claims have skyrocketed, and the percentage of asylum claims found meritorious by our judges declined.

This backdrop set the stage for the so-called “caravan” of Central American migrants who reached Southern California this April. Making credible fear claims to USCIS officials at the San Ysidro, many of these otherwise illegal migrants were able to join Americas 700,000-strong line of pending immigration cases, and stuff in the U.S. while they await a ruling.

Long before the caravan, Sessions was trying to draw attention to the issue of asylum abuse, asking Congress to “close loopholes and clarify our asylum laws” in October.

Monday’s action represents another example of Sessions using his own authority as attorney general to affect these same aims. Last month, he used the same authority to restrict the circumstances in which immigration judges can drop deportation cases. Sessions has also shifted prosecutors and immigration judges to the border to more quickly handle asylum claimants and sought, where possible, to prosecute immigration lawyers engaging in asylum fraud to keep their clients in the U.S.

“We have not acted hastily, but carefully,” Sessions told the immigration judges of his Monday asylum ruling. “In my judgment, this is a correct interpretation of the law. It advances the original intent and purpose of the INA, and it will be your duty to carry out this ruling.”


http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...asylum-seekers/