By Gina Holland, Associated Press, 11/04/02

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WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said Monday that a lower court was wrong to allow an immigrant who feared mistreatment in his home country to stay in the United States.

Justices ruled against a young man from Guatemala who claims he fled to America after being threatened by guerrillas. His asylum request was denied by U.S. immigration officials, but an appeals court overturned that decision by the executive branch of government.

Without hearing arguments, the Supreme Court said the Bush administration -- not courts -- has the right to make those types of decisions.

The Bush administration, swamped with requests for asylum, had pressed the court to decide that the appeals court wrongly interfered in the business of the executive branch of government.

Asylum can be granted when someone has been persecuted or faces punishment in his or her home country -- for things like race, religion or political expression. The Justice Department received 11,000 asylum applications in the 1984 budget year. The number climbed to more than 60,000 in 2001.

Justices, in an unsigned opinion, said the case should have been sent back to immigration officials.

The appeals court "seriously disregarded the agency's legally-mandated role. Instead, it independently created potentially far-reaching legal precedent about the significance of political change in Guatemala, a highly complex and sensitive matter," justices wrote.

Immigration officials will now reconsider whether Fredy Orlando Ventura should be returned to Guatemala. He arrived in America in 1993 after guerrillas threatened to harm him and his family if he did not join their forces. He said relatives and friends had been killed by guerrillas and that an uncle was seriously injured in a machete attack.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Ventura should not be forced to leave because he has been persecuted for his political beliefs.

"The evidence compels the conclusion that it is more likely than not that his life or freedom would be threatened ... if he were to return to Guatemala," the court wrote.

That court is considered the most liberal among the nation's federal appellate courts. Frequently overturned by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit is portrayed in government paperwork as too sympathetic to refugees.

"Congress has charged the attorney general, not the courts, with administering the immigration laws," Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the Bush administration's Supreme Court lawyer, told justices in a filing.

Olson also said that the lower court frequently usurps immigration officials and its approach "compromises enforcement of the immigration laws." He said the case has implications for foreign affairs and national defense.

The administration has been criticized for not granting asylum more often. Last week more than 200 Haitian immigrants arrived in Florida on a crowded freighter. They have been detained while the government decides whether to grant them asylum, but immigrant groups believe most will be deported. A march was planned Monday to protest their situation.

The case is Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Ventura, 02-29.