Court limits deportation for drug crimes

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the Bush administration’s aggressive use of immigration laws to expel legal immigrants for minor drug crimes, a decision that could spare thousands from being deported.

Immigrants’ rights lawyers said the resounding 8-1 decision would allow noncitizens who have families, jobs and otherwise clean records to appeal to immigration judges to stay in this country, despite a past drug conviction.

Since 1996, the more than 12 million legal immigrants in the United States have been subject to mandatory deportation if they are guilty of an “aggravated felony,” including a “drug trafficking crime.” Four years ago, the government expanded the reach of this law to include state drug crimes that can result in one year in jail, even if the offense is simple drug possession.

In Tuesday’s decision, the justices said it did not make sense to interpret the words “aggravated felony” and “drug trafficking crime” to mean simple drug possession. Justice David H. Souter, who wrote the opinion, said the government’s interpretation was incoherent.

In the case, Lopez v. Gonzales, the court said the automatic deportation rule should be triggered only by drug offenses that are the equivalent of drug crimes “punishable as a felony under federal law.”

It’s unclear how many legal immigrants have been deported for minor drug crimes.

Between mid-1997 and May, federal officials used the aggravated-felony provisions to deport an estimated 156,713 people through court proceedings, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which is associated with Syracuse University. Of that number, one-third had a criminal conviction for a controlled substance.

Immigrants’ rights advocates said the stepped-up enforcement had collared many legal residents who were generally law-abiding and often well-established in their adopted communities.

The decision reopened the case of Jose Antonio Lopez, an immigrant from Mexico who had lived as a permanent resident of South Dakota since 1990. He was married, has two children and had owned a grocery store.

In 1997, he was charged with aiding a person in obtaining cocaine and later pleaded guilty to drug possession. This was a felony in South Dakota but a misdemeanor under federal law. After serving 15 months in prison, Lopez was released, but U.S. immigration authorities deported him to Mexico.