The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that immigrants cannot benefit from prior deportation with legal flaws to avoid a more severe subsequent punishment for entering the country illegally.
The magistrates ruled unanimously in favor of the Government and against a Mexican immigrant who sought to challenge the charges of illegal re-entry under the theory that since it was inappropriate to deport him in the first instance, he could not be punished more severely for crossing the border irregularly. , as established by law.
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Mexican Refugio Palomar Santiago was a lawful permanent resident when he was convicted in California of driving under the influence and a judge ordered his deportation in 1998.
But six years later,
the Supreme Court itself decided that drunk driving is not reason enough to deport an immigrant.
Palomar Santiago decided at one point to return irregularly to the United States, but was arrested in 2017 and charged with illegal entry into the country.
A District Court and the Ninth Circuit of Appeals agreed with him, noting that his first expulsion was invalid, taking into account the new jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
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But with its ruling known this Monday, the highest court establishes that those who were deported before that change in doctrine cannot review their expulsion in this way.
The Supreme Court holds that Immigration Law does not allow deported immigrants to re-enter the United States without showing that they
have exhausted their options for judicial review
, even after the original offense that led to their deportation was overturned.
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"The administrative review of deportation orders exists precisely so that non-citizens can question the essence of the decisions of immigration judges," he assures in his sentence.
Progressive judge Sonia Sotomayor, in charge of drafting the ruling, indicated that the error of an immigration judge "does not excuse non-compliance by the non-citizen with a mandatory exhaustion requirement if an additional administrative review, and then a judicial review if necessary. necessary, it could correct that same error. "
With information from Efe and Law360.