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>Attorney General William Barr on Monday reversed a 2018 immigration court ruling that found that a migrant whose immediate family member who was persecuted in their home country may be able to claim asylum.
>The order is yet another hit to the U.S.’s asylum laws, and the most recent action taken by U.S. authorities in recent weeks that would impact asylum rules and procedures.
>In this latest decision, Barr effectively tightened a measure in the Immigration and Nationality Act that states a migrant can be granted asylum if they show they have been or will be persecuted because of “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
>Barr wrote that the Board of Immigration Appeals has previously found that those in a “particular social group” under asylum laws must share “a common immutable characteristic.”
>“The fact that a criminal group — such as a drug cartel, gang, or guerrilla force — targets a group of people does not, standing alone, transform those people into a particular social group,” the decision reads.
>The order states that the immigration court had “improperly” decided a 2018 case, in which a migrant had claimed asylum due to persecution, stating that his father, who owned a store, was targeted by a local drug cartel. The migrant said that qualified as “membership in a particular social group,” as laid out in the immigration law.
>“Consistent with these prior decisions, I conclude that an alien’s family-based group will not constitute a particular social group unless it has been shown to be socially distinct in the eyes of its society, not just those of its alleged persecutor,” the attorney general’s decision reads.
