The Ninth Circuit has granted a petition for review filed by a Guatemalan family denied asylum under the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule, which presumed them ineligible for asylum because they entered the United States between ports of entry, holding that the Rule conflicts with the statutory guarantee that noncitizens may apply for asylum regardless of manner of entry.
Reaffirming its decisions in East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden and East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Garland, the Court held that conditioning asylum eligibility, rather than merely the exercise of discretion, on whether a noncitizen entered at a port of entry renders the statutory right to apply for asylum a dead letter, and that the Rule's narrow exceptions for parole, port-of-entry appointments, or a denial of protection in a transit country do not cure this conflict because each exception is itself legally invalid or practically illusory. The Court also held the agency committed legal error by failing to apply the circuit's complete two-part framework for analyzing mixed-motive persecution claims and remanded for the agency to reconsider whether gang violence against the family was centrally motivated by their status as taxi business owners who resisted extortion.
The full text of Garcia Morales v. Blanche can be found here: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/08/31/25-1760.pdf