If your family remains in Cuba without having suffered persecution, this fact can become an argument to deny asylum in the United States. This warning comes from immigration lawyer Willy Allen in a conversation with Tania Costa for CiberCuba, where he discusses how a legal precedent from 1998 is being increasingly used to undermine requests for international protection.
The precedent in question is Matter of A-E-M-, a decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) which establishes that an applicant's fear of persecution is deemed less reasonable when their close relatives have been in the country of origin for a long time without having been harmed.
According to Allen, the criterion is not new, but it is being applied more rigorously today. "It has always existed; there has always been that point that needs to be reviewed," explained the lawyer, who added that the key is to demonstrate that the applicant has a risk profile different from that of their family.
The lawyer summarized the central argument faced by the applicants. "If you are seeking political asylum from Colombia, Venezuela, China, Cuba, and your family continues to live there and has not faced persecution, has not had a problem, that can always be a factor they will use against you, and it is always a factor to ask: how difficult was your persecution if your family still lives there?"
The defensive strategy proposed by Allen involves legally separating the applicant's situation from that of their relatives. He provided two specific examples: a Cuban persecuted for their sexual orientation has circumstances that their heterosexual family does not share; and a political activist who has directly engaged in opposition to the regime differs from relatives who have never participated in politics. "There is always a way to separate it in order to obtain what you are seeking," he stated.
This argument carries special weight in the current context of extreme migration restrictions. According to Allen, the Trump administration has denied 94% of asylum claims in recent months, a figure that aligns with the data from TRAC/Syracuse, which reported a denial rate of 94.1% in June 2026. Additionally, there have been 250,000 revoked visas and a 75% drop in the number of naturalizations.
"When you see that it is a government that has reduced the number of naturalized individuals by 75%, that is denying 94% of asylum claims, that has revoked 250,000 visas, you realize the stance of a government that is completely anti-immigrant and is looking for ways to deny asylum," Allen pointed out.
The situation for Cubans is particularly challenging. The asylum approval rate for applicants from the Island dropped to 7% in April 2026, and in June, over 1,600 deportation orders were issued against Cubans, with about 42,000 final orders pending execution.
This landscape is further complicated by a new precedent from the BIA, Matter of G-R-B-, issued on October 1, which allows a judge to dismiss an asylum application on their own accord without the need for a prior motion from the Department of Homeland Security if the facts do not show eligibility at first glance.
Journalist Tania Costa, who hosts the program with Willy Allen on CiberCuba every Monday, also pointed out that assuming the entire family thinks the same as the asylum seeker is a mistake. “There are families that have Christmas dinners that turn into a real battlefield when politics come up,” she said, emphasizing that family coexistence does not imply political alignment with the Cuban regime or a lack of risk for the applicant.
Allen was straightforward about what all this means in practice: "Right now, when you have judges denying 94% of asylum requests, it makes everything just a little bit more difficult."
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