Another Good Supreme Court Decision

If you've read this blog for very long you will know that I'm not very happy with the right-wing leaning of the current members of the United States Supreme Court, but I have to admit they have made some pretty decent decisions lately. And the recent immigration deportation decision by the court is one of those decisions that I wholeheartedly agree with.

Back in 1996 the U.S. Congress passed a law that said any non-citizen (legal or illegal) that was convicted of an "aggravated felony" would be automatically deported. The problem with the law is that the Congress did not sufficiently define what constituted an "aggravated felony". This has left the law open to abuse by overzealous officials.

Jose Carachuri-Rosendo, who entered the United States from Mexico at age 4, was a legal permanent resident living in Texas with his wife and four children. His problem was that he had two arrests for minor offenses. He was first arrested for having one marijuana cigarette. Then he was later arrested for being in possession of a single Xanax pill without a prescription (an anti-anxiety drug).

An immigration judge (and I use the term "judge" loosely) decided that these two minor offenses amounted to an "aggravated felony" when added together and ordered him to be deported to Mexico. Amazingly the Court of Appeals agreed with the deportation order. But then the Supreme Court reviewed the case and overturned the ruling in a 9 to 0 vote (an rare unanimous decision).

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the decision saying, "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'." The court was right. Congress never meant for minor crimes like this to be defined as an "aggravated felony". This was clearly a case of federal officials abusing their power and the law.

Thank goodness the Supreme Court stepped in and returned a small bit of sanity to immigration law.