If you told most conservatives six months ago that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has a reputation for posing baffling questions during oral arguments and for often being the lone dissenter on cases, would be the author of a unanimous Supreme Court opinion delivering a major immigration victory to the Trump administration, they’d have laughed you out of the room.
Yet here we are.
On Wednesday, the Court handed down its ruling in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi. The ruling is a genuine win for the Trump administration and for anyone who believes that immigration law should mean something. And not only was Jackson, Joe Biden’s DEI hire for the Supreme Court, not the sole dissenter; she actually wrote the majority opinion. There aren’t even any concurring opinions.
Jackson held that federal appeals courts must apply a “substantial-evidence standard” when reviewing immigration judges’ findings on whether an asylum seeker faces a credible risk of “persecution” if deported. In plain terms, that means a federal court can’t simply override an immigration judge’s decision because it sees things differently. The judge’s finding stands unless the evidence is so overwhelming that no reasonable person could reach the opposite conclusion.
Jackson emphasized the high bar courts must meet before overturning an immigration judge’s findings, potentially making it more difficult for migrants to challenge their deportations as the Trump administration cracks down on illegal immigration.
“The agency’s determination… is generally ‘conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary,’” Jackson wrote.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, migrants can claim asylum when crossing the border without documentation. But immigration judges, who are employees of the Department of Justice, eventually vet those claims and determine whether to grant migrants asylum, which would allow them to stay in the country, or order their deportation.
The migrant can appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also housed within the executive branch, and can then appeal that decision to the federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court.
The case involved Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, his wife, and their child, Salvadoran nationals who entered the country illegally in 2021 and immediately sought asylum. Urias-Orellana said a hitman had targeted his family since 2016 after shooting two of his half-brothers and vowing to kill relatives. An immigration judge found his testimony credible but ruled the threats didn’t meet the legal threshold for persecution. The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed. The First Circuit agreed. And now the Supreme Court does too—unanimously.
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The central question was whether the First Circuit had properly deferred to the immigration judge’s factual findings or had been too hands-off. The court said the lower court got it right. By reinforcing the substantial-evidence standard, the ruling strengthens executive authority over asylum decisions and makes it harder for illegal immigrants to use federal courts to block deportation.
That’s the bottom line. The Trump administration has been pushing an aggressive deportation agenda, and this ruling removes one of the more commonly exploited pressure valves in the system. Federal judges no longer get to substitute their own judgment for that of immigration judges on questions of fact.
Give credit where it’s due. Jackson wrote a clean, unanimous opinion that strengthens the rule of law on immigration. I bet nobody saw that coming.
Now, if only she could figure out what a woman is.
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