Should legal immigrants be subject to deportation when they are convicted of minor crimes, such as drug possession?

The Supreme Court emphatically ruled no on Tuesday, in 9-0 decision. The Court ruled in Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder that legal immigrants cannot be deported for minor drug possession charges. In order for deportation to be appropriate, a person must be charged with serious or violent crimes.

The Court’s ruling was a rebuke of a 1996 federal law that requires automatic deportation of non-citizens found guilty of an aggravated felony. Because the term aggravated felony was not carefully defined, immigration judges could loosely interpret it to include crimes such as a second drug possession conviction. 

Justice Stevens wrote the opinion for the Court and cited an old standby, Black’s Law Dictionary, in his analysis:

Related Resources:

We do not usually think of a 10-day sentence for the unauthorized possession of a trivial amount of a prescription drug as an “aggravated felony.” A “felony,” we have come to understand, is a “serious crime usually punishable by imprisonment for more than one year or by death.”

We hold that when a defendant has been convicted of a simple possession offense that has not been enhanced based on the fact of a prior conviction, he has not been “convicted”…of a “felony punishable” as such “under the Controlled Substances Act.”

  • Supreme Court ruling in favor of immigrant clarifies automatic-deportation law (LA Times)
  • Immigration Law Center (FindLaw)
  • Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder (FindLaw)

 

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