The US Supreme Court ruled this Friday against the case of a US citizen married to a Salvadoran man who was denied a visa by immigration authorities to return to the United States to join his wife, in part because of his tattoos.
According to the criteria of
In a vote of six to three, the highest court sided with the US government in the case of Luis Asencio Cordero, 47, who has been separated from his wife, American lawyer Sandra Muñoz, for almost 10 years.
The State Department denied him an immigrant visa for allegedly being a member of a gang in his country.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her decision that Muñoz does not have the constitutionally protected “freedom” to do anything about her husband’s immigrant visa.
On the contrary, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberals who was in favor of the Latina, stressed that “Muñoz has a constitutionally protected interest in her husband’s visa application because its denial harms her right to marriage.”
Why was your visa denied?
The couple met in Los Angeles, where they married, and In 2015 Asencio Cordero returned to El Salvador for what was supposed to be his final appointment at the US consulate and return as a permanent resident.
But during the interview they asked him to undress and they took photos of his tattoos: the Virgin of Guadalupe, theater masks, dice and playing cards.
A consular officer asked him about his criminal record, and he described a three-day arrest for a fight with a friend, for which no charges were filed.
After the interview, the Salvadoran received a notification that his residency application had been rejected, consequently denying him a visa to return to the United States without explaining the reasons.
In 2017, the couple filed a lawsuit in a court in California and learned that they had denied him residency because the government believed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13 based on the interview, his alleged criminal history and his tattoos.
The legal battle waged by the couple, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), attorney Eric Lee and attorneys from the University of California Berkeley law school questioned the secrets behind the visa decisions and what process, if any, There is one, it is used to correct erroneous consular decisions.
The US Department of Justice argued that The Executive has the power to exclude the spouses of US citizens “without giving a reason”, even though the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had approved the petition.
In that sense, Sotomayor wrote that “once Muñoz’s husband left the country relying on those (USCIS) approvals, their marriage stopped mattering.”
Attorney Lee said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s decision “is a historic attack” on due process and the rights to marriage and immigrants.
It is “inconsistent” with the Biden Administration’s rhetoric that immigrants and citizens should be seen as human beings. “It’s just another form of family separation,” lamented Charles Roth, NIJC’s litigation director.
The decision comes in the same week that the White House announced a program that favors undocumented spouses of US citizens and that would have protected Asencio.
The ruling will have significant repercussions for immigrants in similar situations because it is extremely unusual to win challenges to the government’s refusals to grant visas.
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