Asylum seekers in the United States face a precarious pathway to humanitarian protection, shaped by institutional fragmentation and interpretative discretion. For nearly four decades until June 2024, U.S. courts were required to defer to interpretations issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) under the doctrine of Chevron deference. This legal rule gave federal agencies, such as the BIA, the primary authority to interpret ambiguous legal provisions in immigration law that determine eligibility for asylum. Despite its varying success in promoting national uniformity in the application and interpretation of asylum law provisions, Chevron deference served as a structural safeguard, by allowing agencies with subject-matter expertise, like the BIA, to guide the development of immigration law rather than leaving key questions to vary circuit by circuit. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), overturning Chevron, courts now have greater autonomy to interpret these provisions—such as the definition of “persecution”—without binding deference to agency. [1] Yet, even before the loss of Chevron deference, U.S. courts showed significant differences in interpretation and turn in decisions on asylum claims, especially, between circuits whose regions exhibit different political leanings across the country.
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