Resources on Crimes and Immigration Law

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This chart provides a summary of BIA and circuit court case law regarding the crime involving moral turpitude (CIMT) analysis for assault-related offenses.

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The practice advisory includes key holdings, analytical frameworks of recent cases, and strategic considerations for removal defense.

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For several grounds of crime-based inadmissibility and deportability, the sentence imposed is part of the determination of whether the ground applies. For example, to be deportable for an aggravated felony theft offense, the noncitizen must have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least one year. And to be eligible for the petty offense exception to inadmissibility for a crime involving moral turpitude, the crime must be punishable by no more than one year and any sentence imposed cannot exceed six months of incarceration. In situations where the sentence imposed is a component o

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Practitioners are increasingly seeing requests by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, consular officers, and immigration judges, or IJs, for their clients’ arrest reports. Requests for these reports are being made even where the client was never charged or convicted of a crime. This practice advisory explains how arrest reports can impact immigration adjudications, how advocates can challenge the consideration of arrest reports, and practical considerations to keep in mind when deciding how to respond to a request for an arrest report.

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On Oct. 4, 2018, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued the precedential decision Matter of Velasquez-Rios, 27 I&N Dec. 470 (BIA 2018), that negated part of a California law intended to help noncitizens avoid some of the overly harsh consequences of prior misdemeanor convictions.

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CLINIC, along with Public Counsel, filed this amicus brief on March 7, 2016 in Doe v. Sessions before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. This brief provided the court with a framework, drawn from our experience working with young asylum-seekers, to decide whether the coerced actions of a child can trigger the "serious nonpolitical crime" bar to asylum.

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The Supreme Court decided Sessions v. Dimaya on April 17, 2018, holding that the second clause of the definition of “crime of violence” as used in the definition of an aggravated felony is unconstitutionally void for vagueness.

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On Oct. 12, 2016, the Board of Immigration Appeals published a precedential opinion in the long-running saga of Matter of Silva-Trevino. Two prior attorneys general, as well as many courts of appeal, had previously weighed in on the issues presented.

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Immigration adjudicators must use a “circumstance-specific” approach in determining whether a conviction for a crime of violence was committed against a person in a protected relationship to the defendant, ruled the Board of Immigration Appeals on May 27.

The analysis is critical in determining deportability under INA § 237(a)(2)(E)(i). Matter of H. Estrada26 I&N Dec. 749 (BIA 2016).

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On January 1, 2016, an important law went into effect in California. AB 1352 eliminated the effect of a deferred entry of judgement disposition on a person’s immigration status or eligibility for an immigration benefit. The criminal codes of most states include some form of rehabilitative scheme for minor offenses that erases an offense from a person’s record under state law if he or she complies with certain requirements imposed by the court. Immigration law, however, has its own definition of a conviction, which often differs from state law.

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On June 1, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled on a case relating to a state court conviction for drug paraphernalia – in this case a sock containing Adderall tablets – and whether that was sufficient to remove a lawful permanent resident. Mellouli v.