Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued two decisions reversing Trump-era cases that limited asylum eligibility. Here, we’ll discuss those cases and how the AG’s decision will affect asylum seekers.
The first case, Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N 307 (AG 2021), involves asylum for victims of domestic violence. There is a long history here, but the basic story is that victims of domestic violence have traditionally had a hard time qualifying for asylum. Through a series of cases between 2004 and 2014, the government created a (convoluted) path for victims of DV to receive asylum by classifying them as a “particular social group” (to qualify for asylum, an applicant must show that the feared harm is “on account of” race, religion, nationality, political opinion or particular social group). While this was an important step for DV asylum seekers, presenting a successful case was still very difficult, especially for people without a lawyer (probably the majority of applicants). The Trump Administration re-visited DV asylum starting in 2018, and essentially erased the gains made during the prior decade and a half. Now, the pendulum has swung once again, and the Biden Administration has reversed the Trump-era reversal. In other words, we are back to the not-so-great place where we were in 2017. This means that victims of domestic violence can once again obtain asylum, assuming they can satisfy the narrow definition created prior to President Trump. (more…)
Let’s say you own a grocery store in Mosul, Iraq. Your town is conquered by the Islamic State, and an IS fighter comes to your store, grabs your teenage daughter, puts a gun to her head, and threatens to rape and kill her unless you give him a glass of water. You pour a glass of water, hand it to your daughter, and she gives it to the fighter. Now, lets say that you, your daughter, and the IS fighter get to the United States and request asylum. Question: Who is barred from receiving asylum? (a) The IS fighter; (b) You; (c) Your daughter; (d) All of the above.
If you can tell the difference between terrorists and terror victims, perhaps you should consider running for Congress. They need your expertise.
If you guessed “d”, you win. By giving a glass of water to the IS fighter, you and your daughter have provided “material support” to a terrorist, and you are both barred from receiving asylum in the United States. Even though you gave the glass of water under duress to save your child’s life. And even though it was only one glass of water (what we lawyers call “de minimis“). How can this be?
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress greatly expanded pre-existing law in order to prevent terrorists from taking advantage of our immigration system. These laws include the rules relating to “material support,” which one jurist has called “breathtaking in… scope,” see Matter of S-K-, 23 I&N Dec. 936 (BIA 2006) (Acting Vice Chairman Osuna, concurring). The opinion continues:
Any group that has used a weapon for any purpose other than for personal monetary gain can, under this statute, be labeled a terrorist organization. This includes organizations that the United States Government has not thought of as terrorist organizations because their activities coincide with our foreign policy objectives
Id. And anyone who provides any type of support to these “terrorists” is subject to the material support bar.
The problem is that under these rules, lots of people meet the definition of a terrorist or a person who provided material support to a terrorist. And it’s not just people like the shop owners from Mosul. Under our existing law, George Washington would be considered a terrorist. He led an armed rebellion against Great Britain. Ditto for the other founding fathers. Betsy Ross gave material support by sewing a flag for the rebels. There are more modern examples, of course. How about Nobel-prize winning author and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel, who was interned in a Nazi slave labor camp where he provided—you guessed it—material support to the Germans. And how about John McCain, who gave material support to the North Vietnamese by participating in a propaganda video (after being tortured while a prisoner of war). Indeed, even Luke Skywalker would be considered a terrorist under the current rules since he participated in armed resistance against the Empire.
Maybe the picture I am painting is a bit too bleak. While there is no statutory exception for the material support bar, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security have the authority to waive certain Terrorism-Related Inadmissibility Grounds (“TRIG”). In that vein, DHS has issued group-based exemptions that allow people involved with certain “terrorist” groups to obtain status in the U.S. It is also possible to receive an individual exemption through a Byzantine (and sometimes infinite) process. If your application is being held because of TRIG, you can inquire about your case status at TRIGQuery@uscis.dhs.gov.
One government entity that does not have the authority to grant a TRIG exemption is the Department of Justice (“DOJ”). This is significant because the Immigration Courts are part of the DOJ. Thus, Immigration Judges cannot grant asylum cases where the alien is subject to TRIG, even when the alien provided material support under duress. In a depressing, but not particularly surprising decision last week, the Board of Immigration Appeals confirmed that there is no implied duress exception to the material support bar:
[A]bsent a waiver [from the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security], an alien who affords material support to a terrorist organization is inadmissible and statutorily barred from establishing eligibility for asylum and for withholding of removal under the Act and the Convention Against Torture, even if such support was provided under duress.
Matter of M-H-Z-, 26 I&N Dec. 757 (BIA 2016). The problem is that an alien can only get an exemption after he is ordered removed from the United States, and even then, there is no particular procedure to follow to request an exemption. It seems the best an alien (or his attorney) can do is to contact the DHS/ICE Office of the Chief Counsel and request consideration for an exemption. An exemption is only available if asylum would have been granted but for the TRIG issue. In other words, the alien needs to show that if it wasn’t for the TRIG problem, the Immigration Judge would have granted him asylum (helpful hint to lawyers: If your client is barred from asylum solely due to TRIG, try to get the Judge to state that explicitly in her decision; this will help when applying to DHS for an exemption). If the Secretary of Homeland Security grants the exemption, the alien then needs to re-open his court case in order to receive asylum. Legend has it that DHS does sometimes grant exemptions, so it certainly is worth a try, but my guess is that this is a slooooow process.
Blocking terrorists and their supporters from the U.S. is obviously an important goal–it protects our country and it protects our immigration and asylum system. However, the material support bar is much too broad. It fails to distinguish between terrorists and their victims. Worse, it treats victims as if they were terrorists. The recent ruling from the BIA underlines this sad fact. It also illustrates why the law needs to be changed. As we continue to work for immigration reform, I hope we will keep in mind those who have been victimized by terrorists and victimized a second time by our overly-broad anti-terrorism law.
In a recent decision, Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), the BIA held that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” can constitute a cognizable particular social group (“PSG”) for purposes of asylum. The decision is significant because it marks the first time that the Board has published a decision essentially endorsing asylum for victims of domestic violence. Applicants who seek asylum under this standard will still need to prove that the level of harm they face constitutes persecution, that they cannot relocate somewhere else within their country, and that their government is unable or unwilling to protect them.
This decision on PSG has been a long time coming, but–at least in my opinion–it does not go far enough.
Guatemalan Women celebrate their new particular social group.
In 2004, in a case called Matter of R-A-, DHS acknowledged that domestic violence could form the basis for an asylum claim. In that case, DHS argued in a brief that R-A- should receive asylum based on domestic violence. In its brief, DHS defined the PSG as “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.” Sound familiar? And that was 10 years ago.
Matter of R-A- never resulted in a published BIA decision (though R-A- herself received asylum in 2009). Since the brief was made public in 2004, asylum attorneys have relied on it to advocate for their clients, presumably with some success (since there is no data on the number of cases granted based on domestic violence, it is impossible to know for sure).
To me, the PSG “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” is awkward and contrived. Moreover, to receive asylum based on a PSG, the applicant must show that she was persecuted “on account of” her membership in the PSG. In other words, the persecutor harmed the applicant because she is a member of the PSG. I am not convinced that the husband was harming A-R-C-G- because she was a married woman who was unable to leave the relationship. He would have harmed her whether or not she was married and whether or not she was able to leave the relationship. The husband may have had access to A-R-C-G- because he was married to her and because she was unable to leave, but he was not motivated to harm her for those reasons.
It seems to me that there is a simpler, more elegant PSG that would have been appropriate for this case: “Women.” I suspect that I am not alone in this opinion. In amici curiae briefs, counsels for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies argued that gender alone should be enough to constitute a PSG. Also, at least one federal circuit court (you guessed it – the Ninth) has held that “women in Guatemala” might constitute a particular social group.
“Women” makes sense as the PSG in this case. The evidence in the case suggests that the husband would have persecuted any woman who he was with–whether or not she was married or able to leave him. Further, country condition evidence from Guatemala makes clear that women in that country live in dire circumstances. In its decision, the Board notes that Guatemala “has a culture of ‘machismo and family violence,'” including sexual offenses and spousal rape. The victims of this violence are, for the most part, women. And, by the way, they are not just “Guatemalan women.” I imagine that if a Salvadoran woman, or a Nicaraguan woman, or a Japanese woman lived in Guatemala and integrated into the society, she would face the same problems as a Guatemalan woman. For this reason, the PSG should be “women,” as opposed to “Guatemalan women.”
But the BIA was not willing to go that far. After noting that counsel for Amici argued in favor of gender alone as the PSG, the Board held, “Since the respondent’s membership in a particular social group is established under the aforementioned group, we need not reach this issue.”
Perhaps that is the way of things. It’s best not to push the law too far, even if it makes logical sense, and even where it would protect additional people. A decision granting asylum to women (or men) who face persecution solely because of their gender would likely open the door to many more asylum seekers. Given the current state of affairs in the asylum world–the border crisis, partisan scrutiny from Congress, the backlog–maybe it’s best not to open the door too far. Maybe a relatively limited decision like Matter of A-R-C-G- is the best we could have hoped for.
I don’t mean to minimize the importance of A-R-C-G-. It is obviously a great win for the alien in that case (though the decision does not finally grant her asylum, it seems very likely that that will be the end result), and it will certainly help many women who face harm from domestic abusers. However, the decision codifies a landscape where women–many without the resources available to people like A-R-C-G- and R-A—will be forced to articulate complicated PSGs and demonstrate that they are members of those PSGs. I am not sure how many poor refugee women will actually be able to do all that.
A-R-C-G- was persecuted because she was a woman. Not because she was a Guatemalan woman, not because she was married, and not because she was unable to leave her husband. Matter of A-R-C-G- is an important step towards protecting women victims of domestic violence. Maybe next time, the BIA will take a giant leap.
The Ninth Circuit recently examined “the distinction between an applicant for asylum whose testimony lacks credibility and one who has ‘deliberately fabricated’ material aspects of her application. See Liu v. Holder, No. 08-72849 (9th Cir. Feb. 23, 2011). The Court held:
“[A]n asylum application is frivolous if any of its material elements is deliberately fabricated.” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.20. If found to have “knowingly made a frivolous application for asylum,” an applicant will be “permanently ineligible for any benefits under [the Immigration and Nationality Act],” including asylum relief. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(6). Given these harsh consequences, the distinctions between the requirements for an adverse credibility determination and a frivolousness finding are of critical importance.
The Court ultimately concluded that whether an alien submitted a frivolous asylum application is a “distinct question requiring a separate analysis.”
In examining Ms. Liu’s case, the Court found that the Board’s adverse credibility finding was supported by substantial evidence. However, “a finding of frivolousness does not flow automatically from an adverse credibility determination.” The Court noted four substantive requirements that distinguish an adverse credibility finding from a finding of frivolousness:
First, an asylum application may be deemed frivolous only if it contains a deliberate fabrication, and the applicant has thus perpetrated a fraud on the court. Second, a frivolousness determination requires a finding that a “material element” of the claim was fabricated, whereas an adverse credibility determination may be supported by an inconsistency or apparent falsehood that merely relates to a material element of the claim. Third, although the “applicant for relief from removal has the burden of demonstrating that he or she meets all of the requirements” for such relief, the burden shifts to the government to prove the applicant has filed a frivolous application. Fourth, a frivolousness finding requires a stronger evidentiary showing than an adverse credibility finding: frivolousness must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, whereas an adverse credibility finding must be supported only by substantial evidence.
Besides the substantive requirements, there are also procedural requirements for a finding of frivolousness. In Matter of Y-L-, 24 I&N Dec. 151 (BIA 2007), the Board set forth four procedural requirements for a frivolous finding:
(1) Notice to the alien of the consequences of filing a frivolous application; (2) A specific finding by the Immigration Judge or the Board that the alien knowingly filed a frivolous application; (3) Sufficient evidence in the record to support the finding that a material element of the asylum application was deliberately fabricated; and (4) An indication that the alien has been afforded sufficient opportunity to account for any discrepancies or implausible aspects of the claim.
In other words, it’s not easy to have your asylum case found frivolous. This is as it as it should be, given the harsh consequences for a frivolous finding.
Biao Yang probably isn’t the first man to tell an exaggerated story about his courage in defense of a woman’s honor. Similarly self-aggrandizing stories have no doubt been told in countless bars and around hundreds of water coolers.
Narrative license of this sort usually carries little risk. A drinking buddy or co-worker might express disbelief by making reference to bovine excrement.
But the personal consequences of Yang’s embellishments are far more serious, as they will likely result in his deportation and the imposition of a lifetime bar to future immigration benefits. The consequences of Yang’s narrative excesses also had a broader effect, as they were the focus of a recent BIA decision that added to the administrative corpus of immigration law by clarifying the standards under which asylum claims are determined to have been made frivolously.
TOUGH GUY
Yang, a Chinese national, arrived in Chicago in 2002. After touching down, he told immigration officials at O’Hare that he had fled his country because “family planning authorities” – bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the country’s “One Child” policies – had forced his girlfriend to abort her pregnancy and that they wanted to arrest him.
Poster extolling the virtues of the one child policy
The embellishments would come in an asylum application filed 18 months later. In that application, Yang asserted that he got into a scuffle with and injured one of the abortionist bureaucrats who had come to his house to escort his girlfriend to the hospital. He further claimed to have been beaten and detained for his fearless acts. And then he claimed that he made a prison break and left the country.
IJ DECISION AND SECOND CIRCUIT REMAND
None of these details had been mentioned during the airport interview, however. This and other suspicious aspects of Yang’s story – including chronological discrepancies , “rank inconsistencies” within his testimony, and the sheer “implausibility” of his prison-break story – led an immigration judge to render an “adverse credibility determination.”
The result was denial of Yang’s asylum claim. But the IJ further held that these inconsistencies indicated that Yang’s asylum claim had been filed frivolously – which resulted in the imposition of a lifetime bar to future immigration benefits.
The IJ’s decision was affirmed by the BIA. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit remanded because the case exposed vagueness in the existing BIA standard for making a “frivolousness” determination. Those standards included:
[A] specific finding by the Immigration Judge or the Board that the alien knowingly filed a frivolous application … [and] … sufficient evidence in the record to support the finding that a material element of the asylum application was deliberately fabricated
The Second Circuit examined:
to what extent the IJ is required to set out his or her factual findings to support a frivolousness determination separately from the adverse credibility determination and to what extent he or she is permitted to incorporate by reference the findings made to support an adverse credibility determination.
Factual findings made in reaching an adverse credibility determination can be incorporated into the findings made in reaching a frivolousness determination … but will not be sufficient … the frivolousness determination requires additional, explicit findings of “materiality” and “deliberate fabrication.”
The BIA stated:
In this case, as is often the situation, fact-finding regarding credibility overlaps with fact-finding as to whether an asylum application was frivolously filed. Both determinations involve the identification of inconsistencies and discrepancies in the asylum claim and consideration of any explanations offered for them. There may be circumstances where the pertinent facts do not overlap, and separate factual findings by an Immigration Judge will be necessary.
However, neither fairness nor clarity requires an Immigration Judge to separate and repeat those aspects of the credibility determination that overlap with the frivolousness determination.
… The frivolousness determination, however, requires explicit findings as to “materiality” and “deliberate fabrication” that are not required for an adverse credibility determination. As we indicated in Matter of Y-L-, 24 I&N Dec. at 156, “[T]he Immigration Judge must separately address the question of frivolousness, including a discussion of the evidence supporting a finding that the respondent deliberately fabricated a material element of the asylum claim.”
A recent decision by the Ninth Circuit reveals how attorney error can destroy an alien’s asylum case.
In Singh v. Holder, No. 08-70434 (9th Cir. April 19, 2010), the Ninth Circuit concluded that an IJ may require corroborating evidence even where an alien has testified credibly. In the underlying case, the question before the IJ was whether Mr. Singh had filed for asylum within one year of his arrival in the United States (in general, an alien who does not file for asylum within one year of arriving in the U.S. is ineligible for asylum). The IJ found that Mr. Singh testified credibly about his arrival date in the U.S., but the IJ concluded that Mr. Singh had failed to prove his entry date by “clear and convincing” evidence because he did not submit any additional evidence of his entry date.
The Ninth Circuit found that the IJ could require corroboration of the entry date. The Court held:
With section 1158(b)(1)(B)(ii) [the REAL ID Act], Congress has expressly empowered the IJ to require corroborating evidence even when the applicant has provided otherwise credible testimony. Should the applicant fail to offer corroboration, the IJ may conclude that despite the applicant’s credible testimony, he has failed to meet his burden of demonstrating that he is entitled to asylum relief. Accordingly, the IJ’s conclusion that Singh’s uncorroborated testimony was insufficient to carry his burden to prove his date of entry was proper.
This result is not that surprising. The REAL ID Act, which went into effect on May 11, 2005, provides that, “Where the trier of fact determines that the applicant should provide evidence that corroborates otherwise credible testimony, such evidence must be provided unless the applicant does not have the evidence and cannot reasonably obtain the evidence.” In Singh, the Court concluded that evidence corroborating Mr. Singh’s entry date was readily available:
This is the sort of fact which is “easily subject to verification,'” whether by some form of official documentation or by supporting documents of a more informal variety, i.e., affidavits or letters from family, friends, or traveling companions.Travelers typically accumulate paper as they move, such as receipts from gas stations, motels, and restaurants, and often take snapshots providing dating information, and reaching a refuge from persecution might well generate a particular desire to preserve souvenirs of arrival. Accordingly, it is eminently “reasonable to expect” an applicant to provide some corroborating evidence of his date of entry
While I am not sure I agree that people fleeing persecution “typically accumulate paper as they move,” Mr. Singh should at least have tried to get evidence concerning his entry. Had he made an effort to obtain corroboration, he would likely have satisfied the REAL ID Act’s requirement to either obtain the evidence or demonstrate that the evidence is not reasonably available.
The REAL ID Act went into effect in 2005. According to the Ninth Circuit decision, the IJ informed Mr. Singh’s counsel at an initial hearing to obtain evidence concerning the date of entry. Either Mr. Singh’s attorney asked his client for the evidence or he did not. If he asked and Mr. Singh failed to make any effort to obtain the evidence, then Mr. Singh is to blame for the loss. If the attorney failed to instruct Mr. Singh to get evidence, then the attorney is to blame.
A very particular social group Joseph E. Langlois, Chief of the Asylum Division at USCIS, issued a memo declaring that within the Seventh Circuit, former gang membership “may” form a “particular social group.” The memo was prompted by a decision in the Seventh Circuit, Ramos v. Holder, 589 F.3d 426 (7th Cir. 2009), which held that former gang membership is a cognizable social group for asylum purposes. Writing for the Court, Judge Posner notes that, “the term ‘particular social groups’ surely was not intended for the protection of members of the criminal class in this country, merely upon a showing that a foreign country deals with them even more harshly than we do.”
The decision continues: “A gang is a group, and being a former member of a group is a characteristic impossible to change, except perhaps by rejoining the group.”
Judge Posner suggests that even where former gang members meet the requirements for asylum, they could be denied as a matter of discretion, or on statutory grounds:
We can imagine the Board’s exercising its discretion to decide that a “refugee” (that is, a person eligible for asylum) whose claim for asylum is based on former membership in a criminal gang should not be granted asylum [because, for example, he is not a person of good moral character and does not deserve a favorable exercise of discretion].
[In this case,] Ramos was a member of a violent criminal group for nine years. If he is found to have committed violent acts while a member of the gang (as apparently he did, although the evidence is not entirely clear), he may be barred from the relief he seeks for reasons unrelated to whether he is a member of a “particular social group”; for remember the bar for aliens who commit a serious nonpolitical crime.
The USCIS Memo states that within the Seventh Circuit, “former gang membership may form a particular social group if the former membership is immutable and the group of former gang members is socially distinct.” Outside of that circuit, Asylum Officers should remember that criminal activity, “past or present, cannot form the basis of a particular social group.” The memo also states that all Asylum Officers, regardless of jurisdiction, should note that past “gang-related activity may serve as an adverse discretionary factor that is weighed against positive factors.”
Asylum applicants must demonstrate that their stories of persecution are reliable, and few things set off judicial “reliability detectors” as much as a shifting narrative.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that a refugee will typically go through a battery of interviews with many different authorities before her claim is adjudicated. As the mound of interview transcripts grows, so too do the odds of conflicting testimony.
Ming Zhang recently learned this the hard way. Zhang, who entered the U.S. in 2003 and made a Chinese “family planning” claim – premised on protections offered for victims of China’s coercive family planning policies – was denied asylum on the basis of inconsistencies between her testimony before an immigration judge, in her “airport interview,” and in her “credible fear” interview. Zhang’s appeal of this denial was upheld in an October 2009 decision that established new precedent in the Second Circuit on the issue of the extent to which reviewing courts may consider the record of “credible fear” interviews when evaluating an alien’s reliability. See Zhang v. Holder, No. 07-0327 (2nd Cir. Oct. 30, 2009):
[Zhang’s] asylum application emphasized that she had undergone two forced abortions and had been driven to attempt suicide. [She] did not, however, discuss any of these events at her airport interview, or at her later credible fear interview.
Zhang, who does not speak English and was interviewed through a Mandarin translator, had told her airport interviewer that she immigrated because the Chinese government was forcing her to “have a birth control device” implanted in her, that she had been detained for refusing to submit to the procedure, and that if she was sent back she “would die.” She repeated but did not add to those claims a week later, in a “credible fear” interview at an INS facility where she had been detained.
When asked why she did not discuss the forced abortions and suicide attempt at those interviews, Zhang said she was “confused” and did not know what to say. She further asserted that she had mentioned “suicide” in her airport interview, and that the omission of that statement from the transcript was wrong. This explanation did not sway the IJ, the BIA, or the federal court.
On March 26, 2010, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a published decision in Matter of H-L-H- & Z-Y-Z, 25 I&N Dec. 209, Interim Decision # 3676 (BIA 2010). In that case, the IJ granted asylum to a couple from China who feared persecution / forced sterilization. DHS appealed. The Board sustained the appeal and ordered the couple removed to China. Some key points from that decision:
While the Immigration Judge’s findings of fact are reviewed under the “clearly erroneous” standard, the question whether the facts are sufficient to establish that the respondent has a well-founded fear of persecution upon return to China is a legal determination that we review de novo.
Determining whether a fear of what may happen in the future is well founded essentially involves predicting future events, and “it is impossible to declare as ‘fact’ things that have not yet occurred.” … We therefore review de novo the question whether the respondent has carried her burden of establishing a well-founded fear [of future persecution].
In order to determine, under de novo review, whether specific facts are sufficient to meet a legal standard such as a “well-founded fear,” the Board has authority to give different weight to the evidence from that given by the Immigration Judge…. This authority is critical to permit the Board to determine whether the facts as found by the Immigration Judge meet the relevant legal standard….
State Department reports on country conditions, including the Profiles of Asylum Claims & Country Conditions, are highly probative evidence and are usually the best source of information on conditions in foreign nations.
The Board seems to have discounted letters and news articles that did not accord with the State Department reports on China. While it is understandable that the BIA would give significant weight to reports from the U.S. government, it seems a bad precedent to minimize evidence that may be more specific to the asylum seekers’ circumstances.
In a published decision, the BIA has reversed an Immigration Judge’s ruling that an application for asylum filed within one year of “changed circumstances” was timely. The IJ granted asylum to a couple from China who feared persecution based on the Chinese government’s coercive family planning policy. The couple filed for asylum within one year of the birth of their second child. The IJ found that the couple’s asylum application was filed within a reasonable period of the changed circumstances and granted relief. In Matter of T-M-H- & S-W-C-, 25 I&N Dec. 193, Interim Decision # 3673 (BIA 2010), the Board reversed, holding:
[W]e disagree with the Immigration Judge’s legal determination that the respondents satisfy an exception to the 1-year asylum filing deadline simply because their applications were filed within 1 year of “changed circumstances” that materially affect their eligibility for relief.
The Board noted that asylum applications must be filed within a “reasonable period” of the changed circumstances. Normally, such reasonable period cannot exceed six months. The BIA remanded with instructions for the IJ to determine whether the “respondents’ situation warrants an exception to the 1-year asylum application filing deadline.”
If passed into law, the Refugee Protection Act would eliminate the one-year filing deadline and might modify the “reasonable period” examined here.
The Court ultimately concluded that whether an alien submitted a frivolous asylum application is a “distinct question requiring a separate analysis.”
