Alice enters the U.S. and files for asylum with a case bound to prevail. However, while waiting to be interviewed, she gets kidnapped, and afterwards trafficked for labor and sex while continuously falsely imprisoned and held confined by traffickers.
After escaping, through social workers and legal clinics, she is preparing to file for a T-visa. In the meantime, the asylum case is denied on technicality, and referred to an immigration judge; the case is scheduled to be pending for a long time.
Once filed, the T-visa is supposed to prompt the immigration judge to administratively close the asylum case while that is decided.
The Due Process Clause requires that the asylum case be heard within a reasonable time since the T-visa is a non-immigrant visa, and if the fear is well-founded, the mere fact that Alice need not leave before the 4 year expiration of the T-visa does not guarantee Alice protection from the persecuting country. In fact, it may result in her deportation or removal thereto, while hearing the case later may make it extremely difficult if not impossible for Alice to meet her affirmative burden of proof as evidence and recollections may diminish, and reliability or credibility may be prejudiced.
1.a. What cases decided that an alien or respondent may, in fact, assert their right to have their EOIR asylum hearing proceed regardless of the fact that any other immigration relief has been applied for in the meantime?
1.b. What cases decided that an alien or respondent may, in fact, assert their right to have their EOIR asylum hearing proceed regardless of the fact that they have applied for a T-visa in the mean time?
