Eloy Detention Center, Eloy, Arizona.
According to the ICE website http://www.ice.gov/pi/dro/facilities/eloy.htm, "This is a 1,500 bed temporary detention center for individuals who are waiting for their immigration status to be determined or who are awaiting repatriation. ICE Detention & Removal Operations (DRO) has an Inter-Governmental Services Agreement (IGSA) with the City of Eloy, Arizona. ICE works together with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to administer the operations of this facility."
PIERCE'S IMMIGRATION LAW E-NEWSLETTER is free. It is published by the Law Offices of Curtis Pierce, Certified Specialist, Immigration & Nationality Law, The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. 523 W. 6th St., Ste. 348, Los Angeles, CA 90014. (213) 327-0044. Email: curtis.pierce@cpvisa.com
Important Supreme Court Decision: Criminal Defendants Must Be Advised That Pleading Guilty Could Lead to Deportation
"It is our responsibility," said the court, "to ensure that no criminal defendant is left to the mercies of incompetent counsel," and "we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether a plea carries the risk of deportation."
In a decision that could affect tens of thousands of people, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that immigrants living in this country must be told by their lawyers whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead to deportation.
Jose Padilla, a native of Honduras and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has lived in the United States legally for 40 years. A truck driver, he was stopped at a weigh station in Kentucky in 2001, and gave a law enforcement officer permission to search his truck. Stowed among his registered cargo were 23 Styrofoam boxes containing a half-ton of marijuana. Although he was a legal permanent resident, he was held erroneously in prison without bond as an illegal alien. He refused to plead guilty until the eve of trial, and says he only agreed because his lawyer assured him that his guilty plea and a five-year prison sentence would not affect his immigration status. The lawyer was wrong.
The guilty plea triggered a mandatory deportation, to take effect after the prison term was served. Padilla, upon learning that, tried to withdraw the plea, contending that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against him, concluding that the constitutional right to counsel does not extend to matters that fall outside the criminal case at hand. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, by a 7-2 vote.
Majority Opinion
Writing for the court majority, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that because Congress over the past two decades has made deportation mandatory for a wide variety of crimes, the stakes have been dramatically raised for an immigrant noncitizen pleading guilty. Although staying in the United States may be more important than any potential jail sentence, he said, defendants are often not advised that a guilty plea may result in their deportation. In a case like this, Stevens added, where a simple reading of the statute would have told the lawyer her client would face certain deportation, failing to provide that information denies the defendant the effective assistance of counsel.
"It is our responsibility," said the court, "to ensure that no criminal defendant is left to the mercies of incompetent counsel," and "we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether a plea carries the risk of deportation."
The court's decision sent the Padilla case back to the Kentucky courts for further action. Although the justices said they did not believe their decision would result in opening the floodgates for reconsideration of previous guilty pleas, immigrant-rights advocates clearly saw an opening. They said the ruling could affect tens of thousands of both old and new cases. "I think historic is not an understatement," said Benita Jain, co-director of the New York-based Immigrants' Rights Project.
Decision Welcomed
"This is really a watershed decision in the immigration rights area," said Stephen Kinnaird, who represented Padilla in the Supreme Court.
Kinnaird noted that with nearly 13 million foreigners living legally in the United States, some of whom came here as toddlers, it is axiomatic that tens of thousands will have some sort of run-in with the law each year. And just as U.S. citizens who face similar charges do, most agree to plead guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence, or no jail time at all. That is where the similarity ends, said Kinnaird. For immigrants, when it turns out that the crime results in automatic deportation, "they're shocked by it because they had no idea."
The examples of such cases are legion, from the woman who stole a bottle of medicine for her sick child, to the Georgia business owner with no criminal record, pulled over by police one night and charged with a drug violation after a dollar bill in his pocket was found to have trace amounts of cocaine. His guilty plea in exchange for no jail time and a promise to expunge his record did not protect him from deportation proceedings.
Immigrant-rights advocates say that the more minor the crime and the lighter the sentence, the greater the shock at the near-certain deportation that may follow.
Jain, of the Immigrants Rights' Project, notes that deportation for an immigrant who's been here since childhood can mean being deported to a country where the individual has no family left, where he or she may not speak the language, and may not know how to "get a job, a house or even order a meal." And for some immigrants granted asylum here, deportation may return them to a country where they risk persecution.
Lawyers' Obligation
For the most part, the Supreme Court's ruling will only help legal residents in the U.S. But for those here illegally, there are situations in which a pending application for legal status could be jeopardized by a guilty plea.
Whatever the situation, the Supreme Court has now declared that lawyers cannot remain silent on the effect a guilty plea may have on a defendant's immigration status. In clear cases, a lawyer must advise his or her client that the guilty plea triggers automatic deportation. In less clear cases, the lawyer must still advise that an immigrant's status could be in jeopardy.
Dissenting from Wednesday's ruling were Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Said Scalia: "In the best of all possible worlds, criminal defendants contemplating a guilty plea ought to be advised of all serious collateral consequences of conviction, and surely ought not to be misadvised. The Constitution, however, is not an all-purpose tool for judicial construction of a perfect world."
Nina Totenberg
NPR
March 31, 2010
Curtis Pierce's Victory in Republic of Congo Asylum Case
Curtis Pierce obtained a final order granting asylum in the case of Ousmane Bathily. This case and attorney Pierce were featured in the January 2007 issue of California Lawyer Magazine. Mr. Pierce represented a young French speaking refugee from Republic of Congo. An expert witness gave detailed telephone testimony about the country conditions and the status of the Lari ethnic group in Congo Brazzaville. The case was heard in Los Angeles Immigration Court before Immigration Judge Walsh. The government waived appeal.
Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States
By Hiroshi Motomura
Oxford University Press, 2007
Winner of the 2006 PSP Award for Excellence, Law & Legal Studies from the Association of American Publishers
Although America is unquestionably a nation of immigrants, its immigration policies have inspired more questions than consensus on who should be admitted and what the path to citizenship should be. In Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura looks to a forgotten part of our past to show how, for over 150 years, immigration was assumed to be a transition to citizenship, with immigrants essentially being treated as future citizens--Americans in waiting. Challenging current conceptions, the author deftly uncovers how this view, once so central to law and policy, has all but vanished. Motomura explains how America could create a more unified society by recovering this lost history and by giving immigrants more, but at the same time asking more of them. A timely, panoramic chronicle of immigration and citizenship in the United States, Americans in Waiting offers new ideas and a fresh perspective on current debates.
PROCESSING TIMES & CASE STATUS
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It is published by the Law Offices of Curtis Pierce, 213-327-0044.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this newsletter is analysis and commentary of a general nature. Nothing in this newsletter applies to a specific case nor does it constitute legal advice.
Schedule appointment: For legal advice on your case, please schedule an appointment with Curtis Pierce, Certified Specialist, Immigration & Nationality Law, The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.
“The only title in our democracy superior to that of President (is) the title of citizen”.
Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. (In the case Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 284 (1922), Justice Brandeis wrote that deportation can deprive an individual of "life, or of all that makes life worth living.")
In the words of President Kennedy,
the United States is a "nation of immigrants."
IMMIGRATION LAW E-NEWSLETTER curtis f. pierce
Attorney At Law
certified specialist, immigration & nationality law
the state bar of california board of legal specialization
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