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Authors

Aleksandar Cuic

Abstract

Through the Attorney General, the Trump administration has changed asylum and immigration policies in several ways. In 2018, former-Attorney General Sessions used his referral power to overturn an immigration court's determination that victims of domestic violence are eligible for asylum as members of a "particular social group. " In the same year, the Attorney General issued a decision that prohibits immigration judges from administratively closing cases. Lastly, then-acting Attorney General Whitaker certified a case that raised a question as to whether membership in a family is a "particular social group" under asylum law. This article explores a question raised by these recent developments: is Trump administration's approach to immigration judges an attempt to decrease those judges' independence or merely to increase the immigration system's efficiency?

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