11th Circuit Asylum Denial — With a Scathing Dissent

For an interesting asylum decision from the 11th Circuit incvolving a Colombian applicant, including a scathing that dissent that attaches the complete transcript of the immigration court hearing, click here. Here is Dan Kowalski’s punch line from the dissent:

“…[U]nder the majority’s decision, no one from Colombia will be entitled to asylum. Since “[t]he majority of the violence in Colombia is not related to protected activity,” since the “awful is ordinary,” and since only “four out of every ten murders are on account of a protected ground,” Maj. Op. at 24, it will always be reasonable to find that violence was not on account of a protected ground-even where, as here, a terrorist group threatens a political activist with death because of her politics, she receives a barrage of threatening phone calls connected in time to that threat and to her political activities, and soon thereafter someone attempts to kill her. This is not a good decision but there is, I suppose, a bright side. What the Court holds today will make it easier to handle our caseload. In the future we can simply stamp any petition for review of a Colombian’s asylum denial: “Affirmed. See the Silva decision.””

KJ