No. of Recommendations: 11
And there you go. A simple step that should have been taken years ago.It
was taken years ago. And it's been overturned by the courts several times now.
The
reason it's been overturned by the courts several times is because the criteria for conducting credible fear interviews is set in the statute. Section 8 CFR 208.30(e) of the Immigration and Nationality Act spells out the criteria for granting/denying a credible fear determination, and adopted the current "significant possibility" standard:
"(2) An alien will be found to have a credible fear of persecution if there is a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien's claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien can establish eligibility for asylum under section 208 of the Act or for withholding of removal under section 241(b)(3) of the Act."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/208.30Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden promulgated rules that tried to change that standard, and all of them have been found to violate the statute. That's why
changing the statute was part of the recently-killed border bill proposal - because Congress has to act to change the statutory criteria.
The "last in, first out" change that they're also considering is not likely to have any significant effect, either. Without increasing the number of personnel (immigration officers, judges, and other folks) it's not going to materially change the number of folks who actually end up being removed. You just shuffle who gets reviewed in the process first.
