WASHINGTON, DC (29 de marzo de 2024) — Docenas de personas y organizaciones, incluidos miembros del Congreso, ex funcionarios consulares y de inmigración, la Asociación de Abogados de Estados Unidos (American Bar Association), profesores de derecho, defensores y grupos religiosos, han firmado escritos amicus curiae presentados esta semana a la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos en apoyo de la abogada de derechos civiles de California, Sandra Muñoz. Su equipo legal argumentará el próximo mes que los ciudadanos estadounidenses tienen derecho a conocer el motivo de la denegación de visas de sus cónyuges para poder impugnar esas decisiones.
Los escritos de amigos de la corte en Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos v. Muñoz, ofrecen una variedad de argumentos que defienden el debido proceso y los derechos de unidad familiar para la Sra. Muñoz y otras familias de estatus mixto.
El Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NIJC) en conjunto con Eric Lee de Diamante Law Group y Erwin Chemerinsky, decano de la Facultad de Derecho de Berkeley de la Universidad de California, está representando a Muñoz y su esposo, Luis Asencio-Cordero.
El argumento oral del caso está programado para el 23 de abril a las 10 a.m., hora del este.
"El caso plantea la cuestión crítica de qué derechos tiene un ciudadano estadounidense cuando el gobierno le niega una visa y la separa permanentemente de su cónyuge", dijo Chuck Roth, director de litigios de apelaciones del NIJC. "El gobierno ya ha reconocido que separar a Muñoz de su marido le causará dificultades extremas, pero ahora afirma en este caso que ella es una mera espectadora de su proceso de inmigración. Esas posiciones son incompatibles".
Muñoz y Asencio-Cordero se han visto obligados a vivir separados desde 2015, cuando un funcionario del consulado de Estados Unidos en El Salvador negó la solicitud de Asencio-Cordero de una visa de inmigrante sin ninguna explicación más que una citación a una ley amplia que no proporcionaba información como al fundamento real de la decisión. La pareja ha pasado más de ocho años impugnando la denegación en un tribunal federal, y mucho después de que la decisión sobre la visa se volviera definitiva y sólo a través de un litigio, se enteró de que el Departamento del Estado (DOS) negó la visa basándose en acusaciones falsas de que Asencio-Cordero era un pandillero. El DOS nunca ha proporcionado ninguna base para su determinación, aparte de una vaga referencia a: antecedentes penales que Ascencio-Cordero en realidad no tiene, tatuajes que no indican vínculos con pandillas y otros factores desconocidos revelados en su entrevista. Hasta la fecha, ni Muñoz ni Ascencio-Cordero han recibido el motivo real de la negación. De hecho, el Departamento de Estado ha llegado incluso a adoptar la posición de que los registros de visa detrás de la decisión consular son “confidenciales” y no pueden ser entregados al solicitante ni siquiera a los miembros del Congreso. A pesar de prevalecer ante la Corte de Apelaciones del Noveno Circuito de Estados Unidos en 2023, la pareja permanece separada.
"El gobierno argumenta que el ejecutivo tiene el poder de separar permanentemente a una ciudadana estadounidense de su marido y separar su hogar conyugal sin darle a la pareja una razón", dijo Eric Lee, abogado registrado en el caso. "Nos alienta que organizaciones que representan a un sector tan amplio de la sociedad estadounidense se hayan manifestado para oponerse a la posición extrema y antidemocrática de la administración".
A continuación se presentan extractos seleccionados de personas y organizaciones que presentaron escritos en apoyo de la Sra. Muñoz:
Defensores de la unidad familiar, el interés público y los derechos de los inmigrantes
Del escrito presentado por International Refugee Assistance Project y American Families United, que comparte las historias de 12 ciudadanos estadounidenses cuyas familias han sido devastadas, a veces irreparablemente, por la denegación de una visa consular:
“A consular officer’s denial of a visa to a noncitizen spouse impacts the entire family. The resulting family separation can impact a family’s financial situation as well as the health and emotional well-being of all family members. ... Were this Court to foreclose all judicial review, the fate of thousands of American families would lie in the hands of a singular consular officer.”
Del escrito presentado por Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law y Equality, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, que describe cómo la obsoleta "doctrina de la no revisión consular", en la que el gobierno todavía se basa para bloquear la revisión judicial de las denegaciones de visas consulares, surgió de una línea de decisiones racistas del siglo XIX que permitieron la exclusión de inmigrantes asiáticos:
“As the history of the doctrine of consular nonreviewability makes clear, unreviewable plenary power is a vehicle for allowing prejudice to infect government decision-making. Although the overt racism of the 19th century has retreated from official declarations of policy, empirical evidence suggests that, even to this day, vesting consular officers with 'extremely broad administrative discretion, as well as immunity from judicial review' allows 'racial discrepancies and bias' to seep into the visa approval process.”
Del escrito presentado por el grupo de interés público Public Citizen:
“Public Citizen submits this brief to explain that the government’s position—that a consular officer may support her decision to deny a spousal visa by citing a broad statutory ground of inadmissibility without providing specificity—is inconsistent with constitutional due process principles. If this Court were to accept the government’s view, it would fail to enforce the Constitution’s requirement of vital procedural safeguards against the risk of arbitrary or otherwise unlawful government action.”
Del escrito presentado por HEAL Refugee Health & Asylum Collaborative una asociación de salud pública entre Johns Hopkins University, Esperanza Center/Catholic Charities of Baltimore, Asylee Women Enterprise, and Loyola University Maryland:
“Evidence-based research studies from the field of public health have made three key findings relevant to the question presented to the Court in this case. First, that U.S. citizens suffer negative health consequences when separated from their non-citizen spouses. Second, that spousal separation often has harmful downstream effects on U.S. citizen children in families with mixed immigration status. And third, that attainment of lawful immigration status by non-citizens married to U.S. citizens has a positive impact on the health of the entire family.”
Del escrito presentado por American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Southern California, ACLU of Northern California, y ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties:
“The government’s position that U.S. citizens have no constitutional interest whatsoever in a decision to exclude their spouses from the country is contrary to the constitutional protections afforded to marriage, and unnecessary to safeguard the government’s interests in the visa process.”
Del escrito presentado por American Immigration Lawyers Association y el American Immigration Council, quienes argumentan que la revisión judicial de la denegación de visa consular de Ascencio Cordero es requerida bajo la Ley de Procedimiento Administrativo (APA), que generalmente garantiza a los individuos el derecho a impugnar las acciones federales de la agencia que apartarse de las normas legales y administrativas vigentes:
“This case offers a quintessential example of the circumstances in which APA review is valuable, judicially manageable, and an essential safeguard against arbitrary or capricious agency action. The governing statute sets out a familiar factual standard that governs the agency action, establishing specific, judicially determinable factual grounds for inadmissibility. And here, for all that appears in the public record, the consular officer did not properly apply that standard (or, indeed, make any serious attempt to apply it at all). Accordingly, there are strong grounds to believe that judicial review would find error in the agency action.”
Miembros del Congreso
Liderados por la representante estadounidense Pramila Jayapal y la representante Linda T. Sánchez, 35 miembros del Congreso presentaron un escrito que describe cómo la negativa de las agencias federales a compartir información con las oficinas de servicios al electorado obstruye una función central del Congreso:
"Constituent service cannot effectively support Congress’ legislative and oversight functions when executive agencies fail to comply with their obligations to provide information to which Congress is entitled. These obligations are well understood but often ignored, hampering constituent service, frustrating efforts to address systemic problems — and, in the case of Ms. Muñoz, leading to significant individual hardship.”
Ex oficiales de inmigración
Del escrito presentado por siete exfuncionarios del Department of Homeland Security:
“In Mr. Asencio-Cordero’s case, the lack of parity between the protections that would have been afforded to him if he could have remained in the United States and applied for LPR status domestically through the DHS Adjustment of Status process, and his ultimate experience with DOS’s Consular Processing to obtain LPR status, demonstrates the inequitable outcomes faced by noncitizen spouses of U.S. citizens. Under DHS adjudication proceedings, Mr. Asencio-Cordero would have been provided: a notice of intent to deny with the factual basis for the proposed denial; multiple opportunities to be heard and challenge any derogatory information; the factual basis for any denial; and opportunities to rebut or appeal a DHS decision.”
Del escrito presentado por ocho ex funcionarios consulares del Department of State:
“The doctrine of consular nonreviewability is justified on the notion that the consular officers’ immigration-related decisions reflect the careful exercise of executive branch discretion regarding sensitive matters of national security, foreign policy, and sovereignty and the careful weighing of policy interests that courts are ill-equipped to undertake or even to question. ... The reality in today’s Department of State is quite different. The overwhelming majority of visa adjudications involve the exercise of individual consular officers’ often wide discretion, reflecting their own personal opinions and biases, within the framework of the statute or regulation they are implementing. While most consular officers exercise their discretion reasonably, sometimes consular officers’ decisions to deny visas are arbitrary and capricious, based on misinformation or misunderstandings, or grounded in stereotypes. ... Some judicial oversight is therefore needed, at least when a visa refusal implicates the fundamental interests of Americans—such as a decision concerning an immigrant visa for the spouse of a U.S. citizen.”
American Bar Association
Del escrito presentado por American Bar Association, que aborda una pregunta ante la Corte sobre si el poder ejecutivo puede evadir la revisión judicial haciendo referencia a pruebas secretas en procedimientos de inmigración:
“[U]nless this Court holds that the government is required to disclose the reasoning for a denial, and not hide behind secret evidence, attorneys cannot provide their clients with meaningful legal advice. Noncitizens seeking visas often must travel abroad for interviews and, when they do so, they risk serious consequences such as being denied re-entry into the United States. Unless the government indicates why it denies visas, attorneys advising non-citizens and their citizen spouses cannot sufficiently gauge these risks or meaningfully challenge visa denials.”
Profesores de Derecho, Historia y Sociología
Del escrito presentado por Migrant Rights Initiative and Immigration, International, and Comparative Law Scholars:
"Holding that the U.S. Constitution guarantees spousal immigrant visa applicants and their U.S. citizen spouses such process would be consonant with the law of scores of other countries hosting most of the world’s migrants, including this country’s closest allies.”
Del escrito presentado por ocho profesores y académicos que son expertos en el uso de tatuajes por parte de las fuerzas del orden para designar la membresía en pandillas y la intersección entre la designación y membresía en pandillas y la ley de inmigración:
“Law enforcement entities maintain that certain tattoos can be evidence that someone is a gang member. However, as courts, law enforcement officials, and scholars have all recognized, common methodology for identifying gang membership is imprecise (at best) and tattoos, standing alone, can be woefully unreliable for identifying whether someone is or has ever been an active gang member. In particular, certain categories of tattoos that law enforcement uses to designate gang membership (such as some of Mr. Asencio-Cordero’s) carry deep significance to Latinx culture and identity wholly unrelated to any gang membership or criminal activity.”
Del escrito presentado por ocho académicos de historia y derecho de inmigración:
“Federal immigration regulation in the United States has a complex history with some dark chapters; yet, it has regularly treated marriage as a special category, providing married couples with benefits and privileges not extended to others seeking to immigrate.”
Organizaciones religiosas
Del escrito presentado por United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, y Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.:
“Since our Nation’s founding, the right to marry and to form a family have been fundamental to American society. These rights—which include the right of individuals to cohabitate, procreate, raise children, and decide their place of residence with their immediate family—predate and are encompassed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ Due Process Clauses. ... A U.S. citizen’s right to marital and familial unity does not depend on whether that citizen has a domestic family or an immigrant family. For a U.S. citizen like Mrs. Muñoz—who has lived apart from her spouse for over eight years of marriage—the adjudication of a spousal visa implicates the fundamental liberty interest in marriage and family, and is sufficient to trigger procedural due process.”
Del escrito presentado por HIAS Inc.:
“When the spouse of a U.S. citizen is denied a visa, without any reasoned explanation or the ability to correct an erroneous determination, the United States has not only turned its back on the core value of family unity, but has also denied that U.S. citizen her fundamental right to due process. And the results of that denial are heartbreaking: the U.S. citizen faces the impossible choice of either moving to another country to live with their spouse, thereby forfeiting their right to live in the country of their citizenship, or remaining in the United States and giving up their right to live in unity with their family.”
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