Recent Cases: Harvard Law Review analysis of Ali v. Barr (5th Cir.)

 A “Recent Case” analysis in the march 2021 issue of the Harvard Law Review looks at a recent immigration case from the Fifth Circuit.

Ali v. Barr
By the Harvard Law Review

In Ali v. Barr, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) statutory interpretation of an asylum-related provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, over which the BIA and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shared concurrent agency jurisdiction. The court did so despite a prior DHS interpretation of the same statutory provision that directly conflicted with BIA’s new understanding, to the detriment of a noncitizen seeking to maintain his asylum status. The author argues that the court should have instead required the BIA to speak to DHS’s prior interpretation under arbitrary and capricious review, thus ensuring an at least minimal level of procedural protection and incentivizing greater coordination between agencies.

KJ