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The Supreme Court hears argument Nov. 30 on whether a person whose asylum was terminated can still apply for a green card. The answer reaches spouses and children who did nothing wrong, and it tests how the justices read immigration statutes after Chevron.
On Nov. 30 the Supreme Court will hear argument on whether people who were granted asylum, but later had it taken away, can still apply for a green card. The case, Wassily v. Blanche, turns on two words in the Immigration and Nationality Act, “granted asylum,” and the briefs now on file read them in opposite directions. Outside groups on both sides have weighed in, most recently the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which publicized its brief on Oct. 14.
The provision, 8 U.S.C. 1159(b), allows adjustment of “any alien granted asylum” after a year of physical presence, if the person still meets the refugee definition, has not firmly resettled elsewhere, and is admissible or receives a waiver under 1159(c). The neighboring provision for refugees admitted from abroad adds an express condition that the refugee’s admission not have been terminated. The asylum provision has no such words. The Solicitor General’s brief, filed Oct. 2, argues that “granted” describes a present condition, so only current asylees qualify. The petitioners answer that it describes something already completed, and that Congress wrote continuing conditions wherever it wanted them.
Both men lost asylum over New York convictions. Tamer Wassily, from Egypt, won asylum in 2000 and was convicted in 2004 of stalking and child endangerment. An immigration judge terminated his asylum but later granted him adjustment with a waiver, calling it an “extremely close case,” before the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed under its 2022 precedent Matter of T-C-A-. Byron Velasquez Arreaga, from Guatemala, won asylum in 1996 and was later convicted of DWI and aggravated DWI; his adjustment bid ended with his asylum. A divided Second Circuit panel upheld both outcomes over Judge Beth Robinson’s dissent. The Fourth Circuit agreed in Cela v. Garland in 2023; the Fifth Circuit, in Siwe v. Holder in 2014, read the statute the other way.
Who stands to lose the path
The people exposed are asylees who never adjusted and then lose asylum, whether for a particularly serious crime, changed country conditions, a safe-third-country agreement or a new nationality. Under 8 C.F.R. 1208.24(d), a spouse or child holding derivative asylum loses it automatically when the principal’s grant ends, a point both the petitioners and the National Immigrant Justice Center press. On the government’s reading, those family members would be shut out of adjustment whatever their own records.
The pool is sizable: the Congressional Research Service reports that 68,000 principal applicants were granted asylum in fiscal 2024. The petitioners’ brief recalls that a 10,000-a-year cap on asylee adjustments, repealed in 2005, left more than 150,000 applications backlogged, some for 13 years or longer.
Current policy raises the stakes. The NIJC brief describes a December 2025 USCIS memo ordering re-review of approved benefits, including asylum grants, for nationals of 19 countries, later 39. A district court has vacated those directives and the government is contesting that ruling, SCOTUSblog reported. If re-reviews resume and end in terminations, this case decides whether those people keep a route to permanent residence. The fallback options are thin: as the petitioners note, a particularly serious crime finding also bars withholding of removal, leaving protection under the Convention Against Torture.
Reading a statute without Chevron
The Court has not yet applied Loper Bright, the 2024 decision ending Chevron deference, in an immigration case, SCOTUSblog has noted, and with Chevron gone the BIA’s reading in T-C-A- carries no automatic weight. The petitioners add the rule of lenity, which resolves genuine ambiguity in deportation statutes for the noncitizen. The government says lenity does not reach a discretionary benefit. It also leans on a 1990 statutory note creating a narrow exception for “certain former asylees,” evidence, it says, that Congress assumed former asylees were otherwise ineligible.
FAIR, which favors lower immigration levels, argues that lenity belongs to criminal law, not civil removal, and that adjustment after termination would undercut public safety. On the other side, NIJC filed in support of the petitioners, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a group of immigration law professors filed briefs the same day.
A win for the petitioners would not hand anyone a green card. Adjustment would stay discretionary, and applicants would still need to be admissible or obtain a waiver the government can refuse. The question is whether a terminated asylee may ask at all. A government win would make termination a one-way door for principals and their families. It would also make sequencing decisive: the petitioners point out that the government’s own workaround, having immigration judges decide adjustment before ending asylum, means the outcome can turn on which ruling comes first. A decision is likely by the end of the term in late June 2027.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- SCOTUSblog case file, Wassily v. Blanche (No. 25-842): docket, argument date and amicus filings
- Supreme Court of the United States, question presented in No. 25-842 (cert. granted June 29, 2026)
- Brief for the Respondent (Solicitor General), filed Oct. 2, 2026
- Brief for Petitioners, filed Aug. 24, 2026
- Brief of the National Immigrant Justice Center as amicus curiae in support of petitioners, filed Aug. 31, 2026
- Federation for American Immigration Reform, press release on its amicus brief, Oct. 14, 2026
- Congressional Research Service, IF11806, Citizenship and Immigration Statuses of the U.S. Foreign-Born Population (updated Sept. 22, 2026; fiscal 2024 asylum grants)
- SCOTUSblog, “Understanding the court’s next major case on asylum seekers: Wassily v. Blanche” (August 2026)
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