The Terrorism Exception to Asylum: Managing the Uncertainty in Status Determination

The Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA "), as it must, excludes a terrorist from receiving asylum. The substantive criteria and the adjudicative procedures set forth under the INA for the identification of the undeserving terrorist inevitably exclude those who are neither terrorists nor otherwise undeserving. Such unintended consequences are perhaps unavoidable in any well-conceived statutory scheme. What is disconcerting is, however the margin of the possible error in the application of this statutory scheme.

Those who may be excluded by the application of these provisions are often not those who are supposed to be excluded as terrorists. Moreover, the existing scheme provides little help in screening out the real terrorists. The Article demonstrates these flaws and proposes some substantive and procedural modifications.