PJI Asks Supreme Court to Honor U.S. Heritage of Religious Freedom in Asylum Case
Washington, DC–By invoking the Founding Fathers’ sensitivity to the role of religious persecution in early American history, Pacific Justice Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to honor America’s heritage of religious freedom for immigrants seeking asylum.
PJI filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief asking the Court to review the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Xue v. Sessions, a case involving a Christian who fled China for the United States seeking religious asylum. The appellant, Ting Xue, not only had to practice his faith in secret to avoid discovery and punishment at the hands of Chinese authorities, he was also arrested for attending a church that wasn’t state-approved.
Xue was then confined in unsanitary conditions, beaten by interrogators, and fined more than half of his annual wages. After his release, Xue narrowly avoided being sent to a labor camp when Chinese authorities re-arrested members of his church, which continued to operate despite a previous raid.
Though the Tenth Circuit did not dispute the facts of Xue’s case, the court still ruled that religious persecution does not necessarily exist where an immigrant has had to practice his or her faith in hiding to avoid harassment or punishment by his native country’s authorities.
Federal circuit courts are split on the issue of what constitutes persecution—which, surprisingly, has no statutory definition under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), the federal law governing immigration in the United States. PJI is essentially asking the Supreme Court to resolve that split, at least in part.
“The Founding Fathers understood that persecution exists where a government has created a climate of fear for people of certain faiths or belief systems,” said PJI president Brad Dacus. “The United States’ history as a refuge for those fleeing religious persecution predates its existence as a nation, and PJI is dedicated to making sure it stays that way.”
America’s heritage as a haven for the religiously persecuted dates back to 1620, when the Pilgrims who faced persecution at the hands of the Church of England fled across the Atlantic Ocean to found the colony of Massachusetts. Congress stayed true to that heritage by enacting the Refugee Act of 1980, which incorporated religious asylum provisions into the INA.
PJI filed the amicus curiae brief in Xue because the non-profit law firm represents immigrants who have come to the United States seeking religious asylum. PJI has had some success on behalf of immigrants it has represented: In February, PJI convinced the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service to grant asylum to a missionary from the Middle East who had experienced torture and discrimination for his commitment to his Christian faith.
“Immigrants from a variety of faiths have risked life and limb to come to the United States to practice their religion openly and freely,” Dacus said. “It should be pretty clear that persecution exists where they can’t do that. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will recognize that, too.”