A Marriage, a Visa Application, and a Silence That Lasted Years

Luis Asencio-Cordero arrived in the United States from El Salvador in 2005. He and Sandra Muñoz met, fell in love, and married in 2010. Sandra was a practicing immigration attorney in Los Angeles — someone who understood the system she was navigating. They had a child together, a U.S. citizen. They wanted to build their life in the country where Sandra was born and where their child was growing up.

Sandra filed an immigrant visa petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on her husband's behalf — the standard first step in the family-based immigration process for spouses of U.S. citizens. USCIS approved the petition. Luis then traveled to El Salvador to attend his visa interview at the U.S. consulate in San Salvador. In December 2015, the consulate denied his application.¹

The denial cited 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(A)(ii) — a provision making inadmissible any noncitizen a consular officer believes seeks to engage in unlawful activity. No further explanation was given. No facts were provided. No evidence of any crime was cited. Luis denied any gang affiliation. Sandra immediately began asking why.

The Fight for an Explanation

Sandra wrote to the State Department. She sought help from Congresswoman Judy Chu. She submitted a declaration from a court-approved gang expert, Humberto Guizar, who reviewed Luis's tattoos and attested they were not representative of any known criminal gang. The State Department responded that the rebuttal contained no new information. Three presidential administrations — Obama, Trump, Biden — came and went. The visa remained denied. The family remained separated.²

In January 2017, Sandra and Luis sued in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. It was not until November 2018 — three years after the denial — that the State Department disclosed for the first time that its consular officer had concluded Luis was a member of MS-13, based in part on his tattoos and his in-person interview.²

The Legal Doctrine That Decided the Case

To understand why a U.S. citizen with an approved petition, a gang expert's declaration, and nine years of documented effort could not prevail in court, it is necessary to understand a doctrine that most Americans have never heard of: consular nonreviewability.

What the Supreme Court's 6-3 Decision Actually Said

Justice Barrett's majority opinion acknowledged that Sandra had suffered real harm from her husband's inability to join her in the United States. It acknowledged that Congress has historically extended special treatment to marriage in immigration matters — expedited processing, immediate relative classification, priority visa categories. But it drew a line between those statutory benefits and constitutional rights.

The Court applied the standard from Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) — the test for whether an asserted liberty interest is "fundamental" and therefore constitutionally protected. Under that standard, an interest must be deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition, and carefully described. The majority held that the right to have a noncitizen spouse admitted to the United States does not meet that standard. Congress can choose to facilitate immigration for spouses of citizens, and it has. But it has never made spousal immigration a constitutional guarantee, and the Court declined to create one.⁴

Justice Sotomayor's dissent, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, argued that the right to live with one's spouse in one's own country is exactly the kind of intimate liberty interest the Due Process Clause protects, and that denying a U.S. citizen the ability to live in the United States with her husband — without explanation, without recourse — is a profound deprivation of that liberty that the majority improperly dismissed.

What Families Are Left With

After Muñoz, the options available to families in similar situations are limited. There is no constitutional right to judicial review of a consular denial. There is no statutory right to a detailed factual explanation for denials based on national security or criminal inadmissibility grounds. The consular officer's decision, backed by a bare citation to a statutory provision, is final.

What remains are the administrative processes that have always existed — and the practical reality that how a visa case is built, documented, and presented before the consulate interview has never mattered more.

How DiJulio Law Group Approaches Family-Based Immigration in Southern California

The Muñoz decision is a landmark ruling that reshaped the legal landscape for immigrant families across the country. For families in the greater Los Angeles area — one of the most diverse immigrant communities in the United States — its practical consequences are immediate. The pathway to bringing a spouse, parent, or child to the United States runs through a consular process that now offers no meaningful judicial recourse if something goes wrong.

DiJulio Law Group has represented individuals and families in family-based visa petitions, investor visas, employment-based visas, and immigration matters throughout Glendale, Los Angeles, and Southern California for more than 35 years. Our attorneys speak multiple languages and understand the specific challenges that immigrant families in the greater Los Angeles area face — including the communities from Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East who make up a significant share of the region's population.

In a post-Muñoz environment, the preparation that goes into a visa application — the documentation, the proactive addressing of potential issues, the legal strategy for inadmissibility grounds — matters more than it ever has. If you are beginning the family-based immigration process, or if a visa application has been denied or is at risk of denial, the time to engage experienced counsel is before the consulate interview, not after.