The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit heard oral arguments on April 9, 2014 about the role of proportionality in removal decisions. Hinds v. Holder, No. 13-2129 (1st Cir. 2014). Is removal and the inability to return to the United States simply too weighty a sanction for the law to mete out? This case involves a 58-year-old Jamaican citizen, Rogelio Blackman Hinds, who has lived in the United Since 1975, was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marines, has five U.S. citizen children, and a U.S. citizen wife. He also has a serious criminal history, having been convicted of federal [...]
Proportionality in Immigration Reform Part II: Pardons, Expungements, & Deferred Adjudications
Jason Cade On Tuesday I posted about the need to narrow the aggravated felony grounds of removal to exclude misdemeanors, which are increasingly unreliable evidence of wrongdoing. Today I’ll be writing about another piece of the proportionality problem in immigration law: deportation on the basis of “convictions” that have been pardoned, expunged, deferred, or that are still pending on direct appeal. Before the Gang of Eight came up with a comprehensive immigration bill in the Senate (S. 744), the Obama Administration prepared its own draft legislation, leaked by the Miami Herald back in [...]
Proportionality in immigration reform Part I: Aggravated Felonies
Jason Cade The fact that a bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill has now advanced to the floor of the Senate is cause for some celebration, but the present bill (S. 744) contains many disappointments, including a failure to address the disproportionate immigration consequences imposed on lawful permanent residents with minor convictions. That failure is all the more apparent when contrasted with the White House’s draft immigration proposal, leaked by the Miami Herald back in February. The Obama Administration’s proposed legislation contained important limitations on some of the harshest [...]