Nijar

We address whether the Department of Homeland Security has authority to terminate an alien’s asylum status, and conclude that it does not. The issue arises out of structural changes to our immigration system made when the Department of Homeland Security assumed functions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

I.

Petitioners, Gurjeet Singh Nijjar and his wife, Paramjit Kaur Nijjar, are natives and citizens of India. Mr. Nijjar applied for asylum in 1995, based on political persecution he claimed to have suffered in India from 1991 to 1994, on account of his being a Sikh and a supporter of Khalistan. He claimed this persecution caused him to flee India in 1994. The Immigration and Naturalization Service granted his asylum application in 1996. He brought his wife and son into the United States as derivative asylees in 1997.

A few years later, in 2003, our immigration and asylum system underwent a major restructuring. Prior to 2003, two agencies within the Department of Justice — the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) — handled asylum applications. On March 1, 2003, the INS ceased to exist. Most of its…