Supreme Court limits how illegal immigrants can appeal deportation rulings

by mcardinal

Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News 

 

The Supreme Court of the United States has handed down a decision that limits the way illegal immigrants can appeal deportation rulings. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned an opinion saying the way Congress wrote the law concerning relief from deportation, it effectively bars courts’ “review of any judgment regarding the granting of relief,” according to a report by The Washington Times. “This plainly includes factual findings,” she wrote.

The case before the court involved illegal immigrant Pankajkumar Patel, who has been in the United States for almost 30 years and looked to legalize his citizenship about 15 years ago. However, while doing so he falsely said on his driver’s license application in Georgia that he was an American citizen.

Because of his false application, Patel’s legalization case was denied, and the government moved to deport him. Patel agreed that he was legally eligible for deportation but asked for leniency before the immigration courts, which are part of the Justice Department.

“Mr. Patel claimed he made an innocent mistake on the driver’s license application, but the immigration judge found otherwise, saying Mr. Patel was generally ‘evasive’ in explaining how he’d claimed citizenship, and that other parts of his story didn’t check out,” the Times reported, “The judge also saw a pattern, concluding that Mr. Patel had previously misrepresented his means of entering the U.S. on an asylum application.”

Patel claimed there was an error in the facts gathered by the government and said that regular independent federal courts should be allowed to review the case. The Biden Administration sided, primarily, with the plaintiff and said that the court should have the ability to intervene if they believe immigration judges made mistakes. 

However, when the time came for the court to hear the case, the high court appointed an amicus, Taylor A.R. Meehan, to argue the case for the other side, and she eventually won the justices over. 

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch led the dissent, saying that his colleagues would turn immigration judges into, essentially, an unaccountable legal liability: “Perhaps some would welcome a world like that. But it is hardly the world Congress ordained,” he wrote, joined by the court’s three Democrat-appointed members.

The congressional language was eventually the deciding factor for the court, who cited the law which stated that “no court shall have jurisdiction to review” immigration authorities’ decisions on whether to grant relief from deportation.

“Today’s decision lets immigration officials make discretionary decisions based on totally mistaken assumptions about the immigrant. The official might know they’re false, or it might be based on an honest mistake. But either way, our courts exist to correct such mistakes and allow all people to be treated fairly,” Paul Gordon, legislative counsel at the People for the American Way,” told VOA News.

Justice Barrett said that appeared to be categorical, and the majority opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that although the U.S. attorney general can allow a person to be protected from deportation, the person must first be eligible, and in Patel’s case, he was not. “Federal courts have a very limited role to play in this process,” Barrett wrote, adding immigration law “precludes judicial review of factual findings that underlie a denial of relief.”

Justice Gorsuch read it differently, saying the majority “seeks to cram a veritable legislative zoo into one clause of one subparagraph of one subsection of our nation’s vast immigration laws.”

Liberal activists denounced the court’s decision, including People for the American Way who said it was part of a “scorched-earth campaign against a wide range of our rights and freedoms.”

“Today the victims are immigrants to this country, who are being stripped of their right to a day in court to resolve unjust administrative hurdles related to their status. This Court becomes more extreme and dangerous by the day,” said Ben Jealous, PFAW’s president.

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