Facts
In July 1987, Elias-Zacarias was arrested for illegally entering the United States without inspection. In deportation proceedings, he testified that six months before he was arrested, in his native Guatemala, two armed, uniformed guerrillas covering their faces with handkerchiefs entered his home. The armed guerrillas demanded that he and his parents join the rebellion, but they all refused. Elias-Zacarias did not want to join the guerrillas because they were against the government, and he was afraid the government would retaliate against him if he joined the guerrillas. Elias-Zacarias left Guatemala in March, 1987, because he was afraid the guerrillas would return.
After an immigration judge denied his application for asylum, and the Board of Immigration Appeals denied an appeal, he submitted new evidence saying that after he had left Guatemala, the guerrillas had returned to his home twice more seeking to recruit him. The BIA rejected the new evidence, saying it would not change the fact that he was not legally eligible for asylum. He appealed this denial to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded that Elias-Zacarias had established a well founded fear of persecution—of being conscripted into the guerrilla army in Guatemala. The INS asked the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit's decision.
Read more about this topic: Immigration And Naturalization Service V. Elias-Zacarias
Famous quotes containing the word facts:
“So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“In spite of the air of fable ... the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)