WASHINGTON (CN) - Ruling unanimously against a family facing threats from a drug lord in El Salvador, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said federal courts had limited discretion when reviewing asylum cases. 

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, noncitizens fleeing persecution in their home countries are eligible for asylum in the U.S. Asylum-eligibility decisions, however, must be evaluated by executive branch officials - first an immigration judge and then the Board of Immigration Appeals. 

Federal courts - which fall under the judiciary, unlike immigration judges who answer to the president - have some authority to review asylum-eligibility decisions. The high court took up an appeal from Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana, Sayra Iliana Gamez-Mejia and their minor child to decide if the federal judiciary must defer to executive branch officials' determinations that a noncitizen's circumstances meet asylum requirements. 

Writing for the court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, said Congress required courts to give immigration judges significant deference under the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

"It would be anomalous indeed to conclude that courts can review substantially similar persecution-related findings de novo," Jackson wrote, referring to a review of first impression. 

Urias-Orellana and his family fled El Salvador after facing threats from a sicario, or hitman, for a local drug lord. After an argument in 2016, the sicario shot Urias-Orellana's half-brother six times, leaving him wheelchair-bound. 

The sicario vowed to kill the entire family, including Urias-Orellana, Gamez-Mejia and their child. After another relative was attacked, Urias-Orellana and his family relocated within El Salvador. But the sicario found Urias-Orellana and threatened to kill him if he did not pay a bribe. 

Six months later, Urias-Orellana was cornered by masked men and threatened at gunpoint again. That cycle repeated for over two years before the family fled to the U.S in 2021. 

Urias-Orellana and his family notified an immigration court of their intent to seek asylum after receiving removal proceedings notices for being present in the U.S. without admission. An immigration judge said he believed Urias-Orellana's testimony about the threats against his family but rejected their asylum applications, stating the sum of the threats against Urias-Orellana did not rise to the level of past persecution. 

The First Circuit affirmed the immigration judge's ruling holding that "substantial evidence" supported the agency's determination. 

At the Supreme Court, Urias-Orellana cited two prior rulings for why the appeals court should have done its own review of his case: Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr and Wilkinson v. Garland. The justices' 2020 ruling in Guerrero-Lasprilla created the "question of law" standard, while Wilkinson held that factual mixed questions are still questions of law and therefore reviewable by an appellate court.

But Jackson said the First Circuit's ruling was consistent with Guerrero-Lasprilla and Wilkinson. Both rulings, Jackson wrote, addressed whether a mixed question qualifies for exemptions to the bar on judicial review. 

Jackson said those rulings didn't address the type of review the court must give to that issue under other provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

Source: Courthouse News Service