Urias-Orellana v. Bondi is not a case name that history will remember in the way it does Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges. The question presented to the Supreme Court is narrow and legalistic, but the facts demonstrate just how broken our asylum system is.
On or about June 28, 2021, Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife, Sayra Iliana Gamez-Mejia, and their child were arrested by Border Patrol after illegally crossing the southern border. They were promptly processed and released by the Biden administration before moving to Boston, where they asserted asylum as a defense to deportation, as many illegal immigrants do.
Neither Urias-Orellana nor Gamez-Mejia is a member of any race, religion, or nationality persecuted in their native El Salvador, nor do they hold any political opinions that make them targets of the government or any other violent group. Urias-Orellana’s half-brother, Juan, however, got into an argument with a drug-lord hitman about a romantic relationship between their parents. The hitman shot Juan and tracked Urias-Orellana across El Salvador, demanding money.
Urias-Orellana claimed in court that his relationship to Juan and the hitman’s grudge against Juan made his entire family a “particular social group” that qualified him for refugee status under the Refugee Act of 1980. The immigration judge in Boston denied Urias-Orellana’s claim, reasoning that his fear of returning to El Salvador was not well-founded because “similarly situated” members of his family still “live in El Salvador without [facing] further harm and mistreatment.”
The question before the Supreme Court was whether a federal appeals court should review the immigration judge’s finding de novo (from scratch), or if the appeals court should defer to the immigration judge’s finding that Urias-Orellana’s fear wasn’t well-founded.
But the case should never have gone even that far. The purpose of our asylum system is, in the words of the Refugee Act, “to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands.” Groups identified for protection during the legislation’s passage included Cubans fleeing Castro’s tyranny, religious minorities such as Soviet Jews, and the Indochinese boat people. No mention is ever made of individuals caught in a family feud over sexual relationships.
The Urias-Orellana claim of asylum based on a family drama is not anomalous. Untold thousands of female illegal immigrants have been granted asylum based on claims that domestic violence committed by their husbands or boyfriends made them part of a “particular social group” eligible for refugee status. Thousands more have won asylum based on supposed gang affiliation, too.
But asylum is not a catch-all security blanket for anyone who has found themself in trouble in their home country. It is not there to make up to foreigners for the fact that their countries are badly governed or lawless. We do not mean to make light of violence in developing countries, whether it be domestic violence or some other variety. But these are issues that should be handled in the countries where they occur. Domestic violence is a problem throughout the entire world. The United States is not, and should not, be required to give a green card every time a man abuses a woman in a foreign country. Nor is it our job, or duty, to take in every victim of every blood feud between rival families worldwide.
The Urias-Orellana case is problematic not so much because the Supreme Court might side with the migrants, opening the door to endless litigation in federal courts, but because the government could have done nothing if the immigration judge had decided the other way and granted asylum.
EDITORIAL: BLAME DEMOCRATS, NOT DATA CENTERS, FOR RISING ELECTRICITY PRICES
Democrats, particularly former President Joe Biden, have been stacking our immigration courts with liberal immigration judges eager to grant asylum on the flimsiest of cases. President Donald Trump has begun to undo this damage by firing some of the worst offenders, but it will take years before a trustworthy bench of immigration judges has been built. A future Democratic administration could easily fire all of Trump’s judges and hire a new slate of liberal judges ready to grant asylum to every migrant they see before them.
Urias-Orellana shows how far asylum has drifted from its intended purpose. Congress must tighten the law by removing the “particular social group” loophole entirely. It is far too tempting a tool for ideological judges to abuse.
