Judge Dana Marks on immigration court independence

The Honorable Dana Leigh Marks, President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, will speak at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law today at 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time. Judge Marks will discuss the merits of moving the immigration courts out of the Justice Department and into an independent entity. Her remarks will be streamed live online here at crimmigration.com. [...]

Immigration judge leader to discuss merits of independent immigration courts at Denver Law

Should Congress move the immigration courts out of the Justice Department and create independent courts under Article I of the U.S. Constitution? The National Association of Immigration Judges thinks so. As the union representing many of the nation’s approximately 250 immigration judges, the NAIJ is the sole official means through which the public and policymakers hear from the front-line adjudicators who decide hundreds of thousands of cases every year. Despite being critical components of the immigration law system, the immigration courts are notoriously understaffed. As anyone who has [...]

Litigating Mellouli: Adventures in Team Whack-a-Mole

By Kate Evans In Mellouli v. Lynch, the Supreme Court reached what may now look like an inevitable result when, for the fourth time in a decade, it rejected an attempt by the government to deport a lawful permanent resident for a minor drug offense using the categorical approach. But the case did not start out that way. Rather, the straightforward requirement that “the Government must connect an element of the alien’s conviction” to a federally controlled substance, slip op. at 14, came only as the result of a far-reaching collaboration to winnow down the case. Editor's Note: This essay is [...]

Mellouli in the context of the modern deportation system

By Jason Cade On Wednesday, Jennifer Koh noted that Mellouli v. Lynch, 575 U.S. --- (2015), marks the fourth time in ten years that the federal government has zealously litigated the application of harsh removal provisions to lawfully present noncitizens with minor drug convictions all the way to the Supreme Court, only to lose. For my contribution to this online symposium, I’d like to put the Mellouli decision into an even broader context. My thoughts here draw on ideas that I am developing in a forthcoming article, entitled Enforcing Immigration Equity, to be published later this year in [...]

Mellouli Matters: Exploring The Categorical Approach Through Three Legal Comparisons

By Jennifer Lee Koh 4-0. 0-4. Over the past decade, the government has lost four times in a row in its defense of federal immigration laws that exact harsh immigration consequences upon noncitizens with minor drug convictions. Beginning in 2006 with Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U.S. 47 (2006), the Supreme Court held that a single drug possession offense does not constitute an aggravated felony under the immigration laws. In Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder, 560 U.S. 563 (2010), the Court found that a second drug possession offense, absent a charge of recidivism, fails to rise to the level of an [...]

The Real World Consequences of Mellouli v. Lynch

By Michael Z. Goldman In Mellouli v. Lynch, No. 13-1034, slip op. (June 1, 2015), the Supreme Court made absolutely clear that a state drug conviction can only trigger removability if it can be shown by the government that the “controlled substance” at issue is located on the federal -- and not just the state -- controlled substance schedules. This is because the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) makes removable only those convicted of offenses “relating to a controlled substance (as defined in section 802 of Title 21)” (i.e., the federal controlled substance schedules). See INA § [...]

SCOTUS: Categorical approach is alive and well

The categorical approach isn’t going anywhere. That is clear from the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Mellouli v. Lynch, No. 13-1034, slip op. (June 1, 2015), released this morning. Led by Justice Ginsburg, the seven justices in the majority took a firm line on the BIA’s decision to deviate from the time-tested categorical approach to statutory analysis used to determine whether a particular conviction results in deportability. The Board was wrong to do that, the Court explained, and thus reversed the Eighth Circuit’s decision affirming the Board. Along with seven other academics and [...]

CrImmigration Law symposium at University of Denver Friday & Saturday

The Denver University Law Review is hosting “CrImmigration: Crossing the Border Between Criminal Law and Immigration Law” this Friday and Saturday. I’m thrilled that the journal’s editors decided to bring this topic to DU Law, where I teach, and to make it available online live through a livestream. As crimmigration.com readers are keenly aware, the boundary between criminal law and immigration law no longer has much meaning for literally hundreds of thousands of people every year. Interactions with the criminal justice system frequently lead to immigration detention and removal [...]