The Supreme Court has delivered two unanimous rulings in June that could impact the Biden administration’s handling of the ongoing migrant surge. Immigration advocates say Garland v. Ming Dai and Sanchez v. Mayorkas, while narrow in scope, will shape the way courts process asylum claims and other attempts by foreign nationals to secure legal status.
In Dai, the Court considered the cases of two men who were found ineligible to remain in the United States by an immigration judge. Both men appealed the rulings to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an administrative appellate body in the Department of Justice, and were denied.
One of the men, Ming Dai, is a Chinese national who came to the United States on a tourist visa. He filed for asylum after arriving and asked officials to “grant me asylum so that I can bring my wife and daughter to safety in the USA.” After immigration officials discovered that Dai’s wife and daughter had already come to the United States and voluntarily returned to China, they confronted Dai with the information. He “hesitated for some length,” according to an immigration judge, and proceeded to tell what he described as the “real story” — that he wished to remain in the United States because he did not have a job in China. An immigration judge denied Dai’s asylum claim and the BIA upheld the judge’s ruling upon appeal.
Read Full Article »