The Supreme Court made it easier for the government to deport immigrants who had permission to reside legally in the United States but were convicted of certain crimes, determining Thursday (by six votes in favor and three against) that the penalties for both complicity after the fact and for trying to dissuade victims from reporting sexual misconduct are serious enough that those people can be expelled. as he considered them obstruction of justice.
"People can obstruct the process of justice even when there is no pending investigation or proceeding. In fact, obstruction of justice is often "most effective" when it prevents "an investigation or proceeding from beginning in the first place," conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett and progressive Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Neil McGill Gorsuch and Elena Kagan voted against it.
The justices discussed two cases (Pugin v. Garland and Garland v. Cordero-Garcia) with immigration implications in which they considered whether a crime that does not interfere with a judicial proceeding (for example, being complicit after the fact or deterring a witness from reporting a crime) could still be punished as obstruction of justice.
What this decision entails
The Supreme Court's decision leads to unifying criteria in all states when determining which cases are considered obstruction of justice and, therefore, would involve deportation.
On the scope of this decision, Noticias Telemundo immigration attorney Alma Rosa Nieto said: "This affects anyone who is not a U.S. citizen. It is to add to the list of crimes that can make it deportable one more, and be uniform throughout the nation. There were decisions in one state and other decisions in another state that did or did not make a person obstructing justice deportable. Now the Supreme Court said: anyone who obstructs justice could be deportable," he said.
"This amplifies the definition of obstruction of justice and the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act], which is the national immigration act," he added. "It's bad news for the immigrant community and obviously they shouldn't get involved in obstruction of justice because they could lose everything."
According to the lawyer, this decision of the Court will mean that there will be more deportations in cases of people accused of obstruction of justice.
The cases in question
Obstruction of justice is considered a felony under federal immigration law, and can result in the deportation of a migrant, including permanent residents.
The cases analyzed actually involved two green card residents who were ordered deported after being convicted of witness tampering and being accomplices after the fact.
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In Pugin v. Garland, the petitioner is Jean Francois Pugin, a citizen of Mauritius with a residence permit in the United States who pleaded guilty to being an accessory to a felony in 2014 in Virginia and was sentenced to 12 months in prison.
The Department of Homeland Security initiated deportation proceedings alleging that he had committed an aggravated offense related to obstruction of justice. He argued that it was inadmissible because his conviction was not an aggravated felony.
An immigration judge held that the offense, under Virginia law, was aggravated because it required the specific intent to hinder the justice process. Pugin appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which upheld the decision. He then appealed to the ordinary courts, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, so he went to the Supreme Court.
In January 2023, the Supreme Court granted Pugin's request to review the case.
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In Garland v. Cordero-Garcia, the plaintiff is the Administration of the President, Joe Biden, and Fernando Cordero-Garcia, the defendant. Cordero-Garcia, a legal permanent resident since 1965 and a Mexican citizen, was convicted in 2009 of witness tampering, sexual exploitation by a psychotherapist or drug abuse and sexual assault counselor under California law, and sentenced to two years in prison. In 2011, immigration authorities attempted to deport him, claiming that his conviction for deterring a witness qualified as an obstruction-of-justice offense, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found it did not constitute an obstruction-ofjustice offense.
With information from BallotPedia, Reuters, ScotusBlog, Law360 and Bloomberg Law.