Supreme Court Limits Federal Court Jurisdiction on Immigration Appeals
Applicants for green cards can no longer appeal denials after the Supreme Court limited federal court involvement in immigration court proceedings because they “lack jurisdiction” over cases involving Immigration Judges' discretion.
The Supreme Court ruled in a split 5-4 decision that federal immigration law “precludes court review of decisions in which immigration judges decline to exercise their discretion to grant protection from deportation, such as by issuing green cards.” Opponents to the ruling were upset that rulings could not be reviewed “even when a judge has arguably made a glaring error.”
Pankajkumar Patel and his wife, Jyotsnaben, illegally entered the United States in the 1990s. In 2007, the couple applied for discretionary adjustment of status to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which would have allowed them green cards and permanent residency status. Roughly half of the green cards issued annually go to immigrants already in the United States wishing to adjust their status.
However, the immigration court panel found that Mr. Patel had “previously checked a box on a Georgia driver’s license application falsely stating that he was a United States citizen.” USCIS, therefore, denied his request to become a lawful permanent resident for “failure to satisfy the threshold requirement that the noncitizen is statutorily admissible for permanent residence.”
8 U.S. Code § 1182 outlines factors that would render any foreign national inadmissible to the United States for immigrant and/or non-immigrant visas. Under this section, “Any alien who falsely represents, or falsely represented, himself or herself to be a citizen of the United States for any purpose or benefit… is inadmissible.”
When the U.S. government initiated removal proceedings, Mr. Patel renewed his application for adjustment of status and “argued before an Immigration Judge that he had mistakenly checked the ‘citizen’ box … and lacked the subjective intent necessary to violate the federal statute.” He continued that it was not material since Georgia does not require individuals to be U.S. citizens to acquire a driver’s license, and therefore did not claim citizenship to benefit from state law.
The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed Mr. Patel’s appeal, so he then petitioned the Eleventh Circuit in 2020 to review the denial from the Immigration Judge. However, this federal court denied reviewing the case stating they lacked jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court agreed that “federal courts lack jurisdiction to review facts found as part of discretionary-relief proceedings under [8 U.S. Code] § 1255.” Justice Amy Coney Barret wrote for the majority noting that “Federal courts have a very limited role to play in this process.” The split decision concluded that federal immigration law in the United States is broadly worded and therefore precludes review of judgment made during the process of deciding green card applications.
Under federal immigration law, federal courts are precluded from reviewing factual findings of a case that are from an executive branch's discretion or judgment on immigration relief. Immigration Judges are under the Department of Justice, an executive branch agency, and completely separate from federal courts.
Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented and stated that judicial review is necessary to catch any errors or mistakes made by government agencies. Gorsuch wrote, “Today, the Court holds that a federal bureaucracy can make an obvious factual error, one that will result in an individual’s removal from this country, and nothing can be done about it.”
The 1965 Hart-Celler Act amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to completely replace the national origin quota system with seven categories of preference that an individual can apply under to gain entry to the United States as a legal permanent resident. This new system shifted immigration to family re-unification. The latest statistics show that roughly 65% of all green cards go to either immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or family-sponsored preferences.
Without a family connection, the route into the U.S. becomes extremely narrow to winning the Diversity Visa lottery or immigrating based on employment preferences.
According to the latest Yearbook of Immigration Statistics published by the Office of Immigration Statistics under the Department of Homeland Security, 1.03 million individuals obtained permanent residence. 51,139 of those individuals were from India. Conversely, 186.2 million were admitted as non-immigrants, with 2.3 million from India.
