Courts Must Defer to Immigration Judges on Asylum, Justices Say

Federal appeals courts must defer to immigration judges’ findings on whether asylum-seekers show harms serious enough to qualify for protection, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously.

The opinion authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Wednesday came in a dispute over the standard of review under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides refugee or asylum protections when someone shows a well-founded fear of persecution in their native country.

Asylum applicants can appeal denials by immigration judges, but a question presented by this case was whether those determinations are administrative factual findings requiring deference from courts of review.

“We conclude that the statute requires application of the substantial-evidence standard to the agency’s conclusion that a given set of undisputed facts does not constitute persecution,” Jackson wrote. “Accordingly, we affirm.”

The ruling comes amid a spree of firings of immigration judges by President Donald Trump’s administration as it tries to ramp up deportations.Bloomberg Law reported in early February that new judges are being instructed that asylum should be granted only in rare instances.

Standard of Review

Immigration judges are members of the Executive Office for Immigration Review housed at the Justice Department. They decide more than 200,000 asylum applications a year, according to the DOJ, some of which are appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of EOIR.

Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife, Sayra Iliana Gamez-Mejia, and their minor child fled El Salvador in 2021 after what they described as a “years-long, violent vendetta against their extended family” by a cartel hitman.

A US immigration judge denied their application for asylum, however, in part because the family had safely relocated within El Salvador. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the judgment, which prompted Urias-Orellana to appeal his case to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

There, a panel of judges denied review, ruling they must defer to BIA’s conclusions on whether Urias-Orellana showed a fear of persecution “as long as they are supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence.”

Urias-Orellana’s lawyers argued that such a decision abdicated the courts’ proper role in determining what satisfies the “persecution” standard under the law. The Justice Department opposed his claims, warning that limits on judicial review promoted efficiency in asylum determinations.

The case is Urias-Orellana v. Bondi, U.S., 24-777, 3/4/26.