The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a Guatemalan transgender woman seeking to avoid deportation on the grounds that she will face persecution if she returns to her native country.
The court’s unanimous decision gives Estrella Santos-Zacaria another opportunity to argue that immigration authorities erred in denying her request to remain in the United States.
Lawyers for Santos-Zacaria, who is in her 35s, said she first fled to the United States after being raped as a teenager and threatened with death because of her gender identity in a country where members of the community are targeted. LGBTQ.
But a US immigration judge ruled that she failed to make a solid case that she would face persecution if deported to Guatemala.
The issue in Supreme Court was more technical, surrounding whether federal immigration laws are flexible enough to grant him another day in court. The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had ruled against him on that point, but other appeals courts had ruled in favor of immigrants on the same issue.
The Supreme Court found in an opinion by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that the 5th Circuit was wrong.
After leaving Guatemala as a teenager, Santos-Zacaria once made it to the United States, but her stay was brief and she was deported in 2008, Jackson wrote.
Ten years later, she re-entered the United States and was quickly detained by immigration authorities.
Santos-Zacaria had testified that she was raped by a neighbor in the small town where she was born and that the townspeople said they would kill her because of her gender identity and her attraction to men.
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