Amid a historic influx of migrants, Lincy struggles to find legal representation for her asylum application. Asylum is protection granted by host countries to individuals fleeing harm or a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group (the breadth of this last category has sparked heated debate). While the U.S. has historically granted a high number of refugees and asylees annually, in 2024, it instituted a new policy limiting access to asylum, barring applicants from seeking it unless they present at an official border crossing or have advance authorization.

A person seeking asylum must demonstrate that he or she suffered past persecution on the basis of one of these five grounds and that he or she has a well-founded fear of future persecution. Unlike criminal defendants, immigration court litigants are not entitled to government-appointed attorneys. Thus, many people who seek asylum do so without a lawyer, and many are detained for years while their cases await adjudication.

The BIA has ruled that individuals must meet both the subjective and objective components of the well-founded fear standard. For example, the BIA has held that robbery and other forms of extortion will only satisfy the objective component if they are part of a pattern of persecution or are so severe as to render the individual unable to live in society. Similarly, in Karouni v. Gonzalez, a gay man from Mexico was found not to qualify for asylum because the BIA did not believe that incidents in which police called him immoral and extorted money while beating him up by yelling “faggot” constituted a pattern of persecution.