The U.S. Supreme Court, on Friday, said that U.S. citizens’ constitutional rights are not violated when the government bars their non-citizen spouses from entering the country without explanation.
The Supreme Court also ruled that a U.S. citizen could not challenge her Salvadoran husband’s immigrant visa denial over supposed gang tattoos.
The high court decided 6-3 in favor of the Department of State, finding that a U.S. citizen does not have a fundamental right to have their noncitizen spouse admitted to the country.
Sandra Muñoz, a citizen, argued that her right to live with her noncitizen husband, Luis Ascencio-Cordero, in the United States was implicit in the “liberty” protected by the Fifth Amendment, and that denying his visa request deprived her of that liberty and violated her due process rights.
The consular officer who denied her husband’s application violated her right to due process by not disclosing the reason her husband was deemed “inadmissible,” which opens the officer’s decision to judicial review, despite visa denials normally being unreviewable.
Muñoz later found out during litigation in federal court that the decision was based on the officer’s finding that Ascencio-Cordero’s tattoos were associated with the transnational gang MS-13 and his concern that he would commit crimes upon entering the country.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in writing the court’s opinion, wrote that Muñoz’s argument failed because she could not prove that her asserted right to bring her spouse to the country was “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.”
“In fact, Congress’s longstanding regulation of spousal immigration — including through bars on admissibility — cuts the other way,” the Trump appointee wrote.
The justices reaffirmed the rule that the decisions of consular officers are not subject to judicial review.
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The court had previously held that there is a narrow exception to the rule in cases where the denial would burden the constitutional rights of a citizen in Trump v. Hawaii, which Barrett said did not apply in this case.
Following the denial, Muñoz and Ascencio-Cordero sued the Department of State, the Secretary of State and the U.S. consul in El Salvador, alleging that the State Department had abridged Muñoz’s liberty by failing to provide a sufficient reason why her husband was deemed inadmissible.
A federal judge granted summary judgment in favour of the State Department and dismissed the suit.
Source: Reuters, Other Media
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