The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in the case of a Guatemalan transgender woman who is attempting to avoid deportation from the United States after a lower court said the immigrant failed to go through the proper procedures to demonstrate persecution in the country of origin.
Leon Santos-Zacaria, who goes by Estrella, is a 33-year-old"transgender woman attracted to men," according to court filings. Santos-Zacaria was deported to Mexico in 2019 and alleges there are safety risks, citing recently being assaulted at a bus stop by three people and a separate instance where the petitioner was beaten unconscious, according to an affidavit from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.The high court was tasked to decide technical requirements under U.S.
The Biden administration's Justice Department argues that federal judges should not get involved in Santos-Zacaria's case largely due to the belief that the plaintiff failed to exhaust other administrative appeals that were made available. However, the majority of justices appeared unconvinced Tuesday that Santos-Zacaria should be required to exhaust all such remedies in order for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to hear the appeal.
“If you were to lose this case on the first issue, would it be better for us, for clarity purposes, to say exhaustion requirements are not jurisdictional unless the word jurisdiction is used just so lower courts don’t thrash around in this unnecessarily for years on end?” Kavanaugh asked Yaira Dubin, an assistant to U.S. solicitor general.
An immigration judge previously said Santos-Zacaria's claims were"credible," but the petitioner's court documents show the judge"inexplicably ruled that she did not suffer past persecution, and thus was not entitled to a presumption of future persecution." The BIA reversed some of the lower court's findings and found the petitioner had established past persecution, though it found the petitioner failed to establish a future risk of persecution.
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