Deportation overturned

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court blocked the government Monday from routinely deporting legal immigrants for minor drug-possession convictions, a decision immigrant-rights lawyers said will spare tens of thousands of otherwise law-abiding residents from being sent away.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices said a Texas man who pleaded guilty at different times to having a marijuana cigarette and a single Xanax pill, an anti-anxiety drug, had been wrongfully deported.

Jose Carachuri-Rosendo was taken into federal custody after he pleaded no contest to having the Xanax pill without a prescription. Both an immigration judge and the U.S. court of appeals in New Orleans ruled he must be deported because his second drug-possession conviction qualified as an “aggravated felony.”

His case illustrated the potentially harsh impact of a 1996 federal law intended to rid the nation of immigrants who were criminals and violent offenders. Previously immigrants could ask for leniency if they had a job, a family or other ties in the U.S.

The new law, by contrast, required the deportation of any non-citizen convicted of an “aggravated felony.” But Congress did not carefully define the term, so immigration judges have been deciding which crimes fit.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the government’s view defies common sense. “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,’” he wrote.

Carachuri-Rosendo, 32, was born in Mexico and came to Texas with his parents when he was 5. He became a lawful permanent resident, got a job, and has a wife and four children. He served 20 days in jail for a misdemeanor marijuana charge. He spent 10 days in county jail for the Xanax pill before he was taken into federal custody and deported to Mexico. Under Monday’s ruling, he can seek to return.