Two Asylum Verdicts Nixed [View All]

[struggle4progress]

By: ARTHUR S. LEONARD
12/04/2008

Two completely different three-judge panels of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals recently found fault with administrative rulings denying asylum petitions by gay men from Iran and Guatemala. In both cases, the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals had upheld the Immigration Judge (IJ) decisions denying asylum or withholding of removal, an alternative form of avoiding deportation, but the federal court determined that the petitioners should have a new opportunity to present their cases.

In one of the cases, the court found the errors so egregious that it suggested that the matter be assigned to a different Immigration Judge for rehearing.

A November 13 ruling involved a petition by a gay man from Iran, a country whose practice is to execute gay men, according to reports by the press and international human rights organizations. The petitioner claimed that he had been arrested, interrogated, detained, and tortured by Iranian authorities, who sought to pry out of him the names of his homosexual contacts ... http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20213939&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568860&rfi=6