On May 16, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Patel v. Garland, finding that the Immigration and Nationality Act limits courts' authority to review the facts underlying discretionary relief decisions in removal cases.
A divided BIA panel dismissed Patel's appeal from the IJ's decision, and Patel filed a petition for review under section 242 of the INA with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
While the courts issue the decisions, Congress has the authority to limit the scope of the courts' review, which it has done twice in the past 25-plus years.
The Court there had held that criminal aliens were entitled to more review than they had before the 1996 amendments, and more review than non-criminal aliens, because they could seek review of constitutional and legal claims before federal district courts through habeas.
Justice Barrett sidestepped the issue because it was not before the Court, but she also rejected adopting that contrary interpretation of section 242(a)(2)(B)(i) of the INA simply "To avoid the risk of this result", explaining that the justices "Inevitably swerve out of our lane when we put policy considerations in the driver's seat." Significantly, she continued: "As we have emphasized many times before, policy concerns cannot trump the best interpretation of the statutory text."
Had the Court accepted either Patel's or the government's interpretation, amenable courts would have parsed what should have been unreviewable factual determinations ad infinitum, thus doing the opposite of what Congress clearly intended them to do.
Though the decision in Patel is straightforward and logical, the Court still clarified many significant points relating to the jurisdiction of the courts to review factual determinations in discretionary relief decisions.
https://cis.org/Arthur/SCOTUS-Takes-Look-INA-And-Applies-It-Written
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