Judge Sullivan Takes Control of Asylum Law
A result Congress never intended
By Andrew R. Arthur on December 21, 2018
On Monday, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order in Grace v. Whitaker, permanently enjoining certain credible-fear policies that were contained in then-Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions' decision in Matter of A-B- (which I detailed in a June 13, 2018, post), as well as in a policy memorandum issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) implementing that decision (which I analyzed in a July 2018 post). This decision, which was a result that Congress never intended when it explicitly limited the jurisdiction of courts in expedited-removal cases, will have far-reaching consequences beyond what I believe even Judge Sullivan ever likely envisioned.
First, it is important to note that Matter of A-B- did not involve credible fear at all, at least not directly. As I explained in a June 2018 post:
https://cis.org/Arthur/Judge-Sullivan-Takes-Control-Asylum-Law
