WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court blocked the government Monday from deporting legal immigrants for minor drug possession charges, ruling that only serious or violent crimes called for removing otherwise law-abiding people from this country.
In a unanimous decision, the justices stopped the deportation of a Texas man who had pleaded guilty at different times to having a marijuana cigarette and a single Xanax pill, a prescription anti-anxiety drug.
Based on these convictions, an immigration judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals slated Jose Carachuri-Rosendo for deportation to Mexico, where he was born. At age 4, he had come to Texas with his parents and had become a lawful permanent resident with a wife and four children.
His case illustrates the potentially harsh effects of a 1996 federal law that requires the deportation of noncitizens who are guilty of an “aggravated felony.” Congress did not carefully define this term, however, and some immigration judges have said that a second drug-possession conviction could qualify as an aggravated felony.
The Supreme Court rejected that view in Monday’s opinion in Carachuri-Rosendo vs. Holder.
“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,”’ wrote Justice John Paul Stevens.
The 1996 law and its automatic-deportation rule applies to all noncitizens who are living in the United States.
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