Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-01310/USCOURTS-caDC-96-01310-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Immigration & Naturalization Service
Respondent
Jean Fritzner LaFontant
Petitioner

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 21, 1998 Decided February 10, 1998 

No. 96-1310

JEAN FRITZNER LAFONTANT,

PETITIONER

v.

IMMIGRATION & NATURALIZATION SERVICE,

RESPONDENT

On Petition for Review of an Order of the 

United States Immigration and Naturalization Service

Susan M. Demske, student counsel, argued the cause for 

petitioner, with whom Steven H. Goldblatt, appointed by the 

Court, and Catherine E. Lhamon, were on the briefs.

Lisa M. Arnold, Attorney, United States Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for respondent, with whom Frank 

W. Hunger, Assistant Attorney General, and Michael P. 

Lindemann, Assistant Director, were on the brief. Ethan B. 

Kanter, Attorney, entered an appearance.

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Before: EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD and ROGERS, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge: Petitioner Jean Fritzner LaFontant, 

a resident alien living in the United States, brought this 

action to challenge a deportation order issued by the Bureau 

of Immigration Affairs ("BIA") based on his multiple convictions for crimes involving moral turpitude, Immigration and 

Naturalization Act ("INA") § 241(a)(2)(A)(ii), 8 U.S.C.A. 

§ 1251(a)(2)(A)(ii) (1995), and his firearm conviction, INA 

§ 241(a)(2)(C), 8 U.S.C.A. § 1255(a) (1995). LaFontant 

claims that the BIA abused its discretion by failing to provide 

him with a waiver of inadmissibility, as provided by INA 

§ 212(c), 8 U.S.C.A. § 1182(c) (1995), or an adjustment of 

status to lawful permanent resident, as provided by INA 

§ 245(a), 8 U.S.C.A. § 1255(a) (1995). LaFontant further 

claims that application to LaFontant's petition for review of 

section 440(a) of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996) 

(codified as amended at 8 U.S.C.A. § 1105a) ("AEDPA"), 

which divests this court of jurisdiction to review certain 

deportation orders, would be impermissibly retroactive because it would attach new legal consequences to events completed before the Act's enactment. The government, in turn, 

argues that section 440(a) deprives this court of jurisdiction 

over LaFontant's petition for review. It explains that application of section 440(a) to LaFontant's petition is not impermissibly retroactive but is instead a permissible prospective 

application of a jurisdictional statute. We hold that section 

440(a) of the AEDPA is not impermissibly retroactive as 

applied in this case.1 We therefore dismiss this case for lack 

__________

1 We do not pass on whether section 440(a) may apply, retroactively or otherwise, to bar review of a final order of deportation in a 

case in which a constitutional infirmity in the deportation proceeding itself is alleged. See, e.g., Turkhan v. INS, 123 F.3d 487, 489-

90 (7th Cir. 1997) (Petitioner claimed that he "received ineffective 

assistance of counsel in his hearing before the immigration judge," 

and that "the BIA violated due process when it did not consider his 

mislabeled brief.").

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of jurisdiction. We also hold that the fee requirements of the 

Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 ("PLRA"), Pub. L. No. 

104-134, 100 Stat. 1321 (1996), do not apply to LaFontant's 

petition for review of the BIA's deportation order.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Jean Fritzner LaFontant was born in Haiti on October 23, 

1957. Transcript at 32, In re LaFontant, No. 17-018-333, 

United States Department of Justice Executive Office for 

Immigration Review, Immigration Court (Dec. 7, 1995) 

("Imm. Ct. Tr."). He entered the United States as a lawful 

permanent resident in 1966 at the age of eight and has not 

returned to Haiti since. Id. at 32. He does not speak Creole, 

the primary language spoken in Haiti, and his siblings and 

parents all live in the United States. Id. at 34, 68, 117-18. 

While residing in the United States, LaFontant has been 

employed as a bicycle carrier and has filed tax returns for 

years in which he earned more than $5,000. Id. at 36-37, 39-

40.

At his deportation hearing on November 20, 1995, LaFontant acknowledged that he had been convicted on December 

4, 1981, of the crimes of second degree burglary, grand 

larceny, and the unauthorized use of a vehicle in the District 

of Columbia. Id. at 42. The INS also presented evidence 

that he had pled guilty on December 4, 1981, to the crimes of 

receiving stolen property and carrying a dangerous weapon in 

the District of Columbia and, in 1994, had pled guilty to 

committing the crime of burglary in Alexandria, Virginia. Id.

at 49-54.

During his testimony, LaFontant admitted that he had 

been arrested "roughly 20 or so" times. Id. at 42-43. A 

copy of LaFontant's "rap sheet" was introduced into evidence. 

Id. at 47, 86. The sheet indicated that from 1978 until he was 

placed into custody pending deportation proceedings, LaFontant had been arrested for forty-five crimes, eleven of which 

resulted in criminal convictions. See Joint Appendix ("J.A.") 

147-56.

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On November 30, 1994, while LaFontant was on probation, 

the INS detained him, took him into custody, and ordered 

him to show cause why he should not be deported. See Order 

to Show Cause and Notice of Hearing, No. A17-018-333, J.A. 

112-18. LaFontant contested his deportability but presented 

no evidence to support his claims. See Imm. Ct. Tr. at 4-10. 

Instead, he relied entirely on his application for discretionary 

relief under INA § 212(c) (waiver of inadmissibility) and INA 

§ 245(a) (adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident). 

On December 7, 1995, the Immigration Judge issued a decision holding that LaFontant was deportable under section 

241(a)(2)(a)(ii) of the INA for having committed two crimes 

involving moral turpitude which did not arise out of a common 

scheme or plan and, under section 241(a)(2)(C) of the Act, for 

his firearms conviction. See In re LaFontant, No. 17-018-

333, United States Department of Justice Executive Office for 

Immigration Review, Immigration Court (Dec. 7, 1995). The 

Immigration Judge found that LaFontant was statutorily 

eligible to be considered for a grant of discretionary relief 

under sections 212(c) and 245(a). Id. After weighing the 

equities, however, the Judge concluded that LaFontant's case 

did not merit a favorable exercise of discretion. Id.

LaFontant filed his notice of appeal to the BIA on December 18, 1995. The BIA, after weighing the factors for and 

against a granting of discretionary relief, also concluded that 

LaFontant was not entitled to discretionary relief in the form 

of either a waiver of inadmissibility or an adjustment of 

status. See In re LaFontant, No. 17-018-333, United States 

Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review, B.I.A. (Aug. 22, 1996). Consequently, on August 22, 

1996, the BIA dismissed the appeal. Id.

On April 24, 1996, while LaFontant's appeal was still 

pending before the BIA, the President signed into law the 

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. Section 440(a) of the Act provided that any final order of 

deportation against an alien who is deportable by reason of 

having committed a criminal offense shall not be subject to 

review by any court. Four months later, on August 30, 1996, 

LaFontant filed his petition for review with this court.

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II. ANALYSIS

A. Jurisdiction

Prior to the enactment of the AEDPA, section 106(a)(1)-(6) 

of the INA authorized the circuit courts of appeals to review 

final orders of deportation from the BIA. Section 440(a) of 

the AEDPA amended section 106(a)(10) of the INA to exclude 

final orders of deportation entered against certain criminal 

aliens from judicial review. Section 440(a), as amended by 

section 306(d) of the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant 

Responsibility Act, provides:

(a) JUDICIAL REVIEWSection 106 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. § 105a (a)(10)) is 

amended to read as follows:

"(10) Any final order of deportation against an alien who 

is deportable by reason of having committed a criminal 

offense covered in section 241(a)(2)(A)(iii), (B), (C), (D), 

or any offense covered by section 241(a)(2)(A)(ii) for 

which both predicate offenses are, without regard to the 

date of their commission, otherwise covered by section 

241(a)(2)(A)(i), shall not be subject to review by any 

court."

Pub. L. No. 104-132, § 440(a), 110 Stat. 1214, 1276 (1996), as 

amended by Pub. L. No. 104-208, § 306(d), 110 Stat. 3009 

(1996). The statute did not specify an effective date. It was 

therefore effective on the date of enactmentApril 24, 1996. 

See United States v. Shaffer, 789 F.2d 682, 686 (9th Cir. 1986) 

(" 'In the absence of an express provision in the statute itself, 

an act takes effect on the date of its enactment.' ") (citation 

omitted). LaFontant's petition for review was not filed with 

this court until August 30, 1996.

LaFontant argues that section 440(a) of the AEDPA does 

not apply to him because such an application would have an 

impermissible retroactive effect. LaFontant explains that he 

made strategic choices concerning what to argue at his deportation hearing more than a year before the AEDPA was 

enacted, when deportable aliens were authorized to seek 

judicial review. Applying section 440 of the AEDPA to him 

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would therefore attach new legal consequences to events 

completed before the Act's enactment, in violation of principles established by the Supreme Court in Landgraf v. USI 

Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 270 (1994). The government, in 

turn, argues that application of section 440(a) to this case is 

not impermissibly retroactive, but is instead a permissible 

prospective application of a jurisdictional statute. The prohibitive nature of the bar holds especially true in this case, 

the government argues, because LaFontant's petition for 

review was not filed until four months after the AEDPA's 

enactment. In addition, the government notes that, with the 

exception of the Seventh Circuit, every circuit to consider this 

issue has held that section 440(a) applies to cases pending at 

the time of its enactment, justifying their immediate dismissal. We similarly find that application of section 440(a) to 

LaFontant's petition for review is not impermissibly retroactive and that we do not have jurisdiction to hear this case.

The Supreme Court established the framework for evaluating retroactivity in Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 

244 (1994). The Court explained that "[w]hen a case implicates a federal statute enacted after the events in suit," 

absent an express provision regarding the statute's proper 

reach, "the court must determine whether the new statute 

would have retroactive effect." Id. at 280. If the statute 

would operate retroactively, the court is to presume that the 

new statute does not apply to that case, "absent clear congressional intent favoring such a result." Id. The Court 

further explained:

A statute does not operate "retrospectively" merely 

because it is applied in a case arising from conduct 

antedating the statute's enactment ... or upsets expectations based in prior law. Rather, the court must ask 

whether the new provision attaches new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment. The 

conclusion that a particular rule operates "retroactively" 

comes at the end of a process of judgment concerning the 

nature and extent of the change in the law and the 

degree of connection between the operation of the new 

rule and a relevant past event.

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Id. at 269-70 (citations omitted) (footnotes omitted). With 

regard to jurisdiction in particular, the Court noted that it 

had "regularly applied intervening statutes conferring or 

ousting jurisdiction, whether or not jurisdiction lay when the 

underlying conduct occurred or when the suit was filed." Id.

at 274. It continued: "Application of a new jurisdictional rule 

usually 'takes away no substantive right but simply changes 

the tribunal that is to hear the case.'.... Present law 

normally governs in such situations because jurisdictional 

statutes 'speak to the power of the court rather than to the 

rights or obligations of the parties.' " Id. (citations omitted). 

The Court further explained that "[c]hanges in procedural 

rules may often be applied in suits arising before their 

enactment without raising concerns about retroactivity" because "rules of procedure regulate secondary rather than 

primary conduct." Id. at 275.

A great deal of debate has centered around the Landgraf

Court's statement that "[a]pplication of a new jurisdictional 

rule usually 'takes away no substantive right but simply 

changes the tribunal that is to hear the case.' " 511 U.S. at 

274 (citing Hallowell v. Commons, 239 U.S. 506, 508-09 

(1916)). Some have suggested (as does petitioner here) that 

"Landgraf assumes that jurisdictional statutes only effect a 

change in the tribunal that will hear the case and that the 

presumption in favor of immediate application is therefore 

inapposite where the statute's effect is to deprive a party of 

access to any judicial review at all." See Kolster v. INS, 101 

F.3d 785, 788 (1st Cir. 1996). However, the Landgraf Court's 

citation to Hallowell v. Commons, 239 U.S. at 508, belies such 

an inference. In Hallowell, the Supreme Court upheld the 

application to pending cases of a statute that deprived the 

federal district courts of jurisdiction over certain Indian 

probate disputes and vested "final and conclusive" authority 

in the Secretary of the Interior. The Court explained that 

"the reference of the matter to the Secretary ... takes away 

no substantive right, but simply changes the tribunal that is 

to hear the case." Id. at 508. We conclude from this that the 

Landgraf Court intended that a statute that takes away 

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thority in an executive agency to resolve certain disputes be 

considered a "jurisdictional rule ... 'that simply changes the 

tribunal that is to hear the case.' " 511 U.S. at 274 (citation 

omitted); see Kolster v. INS, 101 F.3d 785, 788 (1st Cir. 1996) 

(concluding that Landgraf 's citation to Hallowell indicates 

that jurisdictional change from an Article III court to an 

administrative decision maker is simply a change in the 

"tribunal that is to hear the case"); Hincapie-Nieto v. INS,

92 F.3d 27, 29 (2d Cir. 1996) (same).

The Supreme Court applied and clarified the Landgraf

framework for determining retroactivity in its recent decision, 

Lindh v. Murphy, 117 S. Ct. 2059 (1997). The Lindh Court 

further elaborated on the distinction between procedural and 

substantive changes. The Court noted that if a statute is 

"merely procedural in a strict sense (say, setting deadlines for 

filing and disposition ... ), the natural expectation would be 

that it would apply to pending cases." Id. at 2063 (quoting 

Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 275) (citations omitted). But, since the 

Court found that the statutory changes at issue in the case

the "revisions of prior law to change standards of proof and 

persuasion in a way favorable to the state"went "beyond 

'mere' procedure to affect substantive entitlement to relief," it 

held that the statute did not fall within the Court's "express 

(albeit qualified) approval of applying such statutes to pending cases." Id. at 2063-64. Instead, the Court relied on 

what it held to be a clear expression of congressional intent 

that the AEDPA's amendments to chapter 153 not apply to 

noncapital cases that were already pending when the AEDPA 

was enacted. The Court explained, "[t]he statute reveals 

Congress's intent to apply the amendments to chapter 153 

only to such cases as were filed after the statute's enactment." Id. at 2063.

The Court also discussed its position regarding the application of principles of retroactivity to jurisdictional statutes in 

Hughes Aircraft Co. v. United States, 117 S. Ct. 1871 (1997), 

which was decided within several days of Lindh. The 

Hughes case involved a 1986 amendment to the qui tam

provision of the False Claims Act. The amendment expanded 

the circumstances in which private parties could bring suit on 

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behalf of the United States against a person submitting a 

false claim to the government. The Court said that the mere 

fact that a statute is jurisdictional in nature must not affect a 

court's determination of the temporal reach of the statute. 

The Court rejected the Ninth Circuit's holding that "absent a 

clear statement of congressional intent, there is a strong 

presumption in favor of retroactivity for jurisdictional statutes." Id. at 1878. It explained:

The Ninth Circuit simply misread our decision in Landgraf, for the only "presumption" mentioned in that opinion is a general presumption against retroactivity. The 

fact that courts often apply newly enacted jurisdictionallocating statutes to pending cases merely evidences 

certain limited circumstances failing to meet the conditions for our generally applicable presumption against 

retroactivity, not an exception to the rule itself, as the 

United States recognizes.... Statutes merely addressing which court shall have jurisdiction to entertain a 

particular cause of action can fairly be said merely to 

regulate the secondary conduct of litigation and not the 

underlying primary conduct of the parties.... Such 

statutes affect only where a suit may be brought, not 

whether it may be brought at all.... [The 1986 amendment] creates jurisdiction where none previously existed; 

it thus speaks not just to the power of a particular court 

but to the substantive rights of the parties as well. Such 

a statute, even though phrased in "jurisdictional" terms, 

is as much subject to our presumption against retroactivity as any other.

Id. at 1878 (citations omitted).

As these cases illustrate, the Supreme Court has clearly 

established the principle that in determining retroactivity, 

jurisdictional statutes are to be evaluated in the same manner 

as any other statute. Thus, in order to determine whether a 

statute applies to a case that was filed prior to passage of the 

statute, courts must determine whether the statute is "procedural" in nature, or whether it affects "substantive entitlement to relief." Lindh, 117 S. Ct. at 2063. Does it merely 

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"regulate the secondary conduct of litigation" or does it 

instead affect "the underlying primary conduct of the parties"? Hughes, 117 S. Ct. at 1878. Does the statute speak 

"just to the power of a particular court" or does it speak to 

"the substantive rights of the parties as well"? Id.

Several circuit courts have considered cases similar to the 

one at hand, and, with a single narrow exception, all have 

concluded that applying section 440(a) is not impermissibly 

retroactive. See Kolster v. INS, 101 F.3d 785, 786, 789 (1st 

Cir. 1996) (holding that "section 440(a) does apply to petitions, like Kolster's, which were pending on the date of 

AEDPA's enactment" because "Kolster's substantive rights, 

liabilities, and duties are not retroactively impaired by the 

preclusion of judicial review"); Hincapie-Nieto v. INS, 92 

F.3d 27, 28 (2d Cir. 1996) (holding that "the AEDPA has 

repealed the jurisdiction a court of appeals formerly had over 

petitions for review filed by aliens ... and that the Act's 

removal of jurisdiction validly applies to petitions filed before 

the Act's effective date"); Salazar-Haro v. INS, 95 F.3d 309, 

310 (3d Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 1842 (1997) (holding 

§ 440(a) applicable to pending petitions because "unlike situations where retroactivity would affect pre-existing rights, 

withdrawal of jurisdiction, although realistically disrupting 

settled expectations, does not preserve pending litigation"); 

Williams v. INS, 114 F.3d 82, 83 (5th Cir. 1997) (holding that 

"[d]espite petitioner's protestations against retroactive application, section 440(a) does apply to her petition, which was 

filed several days after the effective date of April 24, 1997, 

and would apply even if her petition had been pending on that 

date"); Mendez-Rosas v. INS, 87 F.3d 672, 676 (5th Cir. 

1996), cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 694 (1997) (holding that 

§ 440(a) applies retroactively to appeals that were pending 

before the circuit court when the AEDPA became law because § 440(a) "speaks to the power of the court, rather than 

to the rights or obligations of the parties"); Figueroa-Rubio 

v. INS, 108 F.3d 110, 112 (6th Cir. 1997) (holding that § 440 

eliminates the court's jurisdiction to review petitions that 

were pending at the time the AEDPA was enacted because 

the statute is jurisdictional and " 'jurisdictional statutes 

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"speak to the power of the court rather than the rights or 

obligations of the parties" ' "; also noting that "[a]pplying 

§ 440(a) to petitions for review of deportation orders pending 

on the date of the AEDPA's passage 'is not retroactive 

application affecting substantive rights, but is a prospective 

application of a jurisdiction-eliminating statute' ") (citations 

omitted); Qasguargis v. INS, 91 F.3d 788, 789 (6th Cir. 1996), 

cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 1080 (1997) (holding that because 

§ 440(a) took effect before the petition for review was filed, 

the petitioner had no statutory right of review); MendezMorales v. INS, 119 F.3d 738, 739 (8th Cir. 1997) (holding 

that § 440 "is jurisdictional in nature and therefore must be 

applied retroactively, in other words, to cases such as this 

that were pending on its date of enactment"); Duldulao v. 

INS, 90 F.3d 396, 399 (9th Cir. 1996) (holding that the 

" 'presumption against retroactive application of new legislation to pending cases ... does not apply to rules conferring 

or withdrawing jurisdiction,' " therefore "AEDPA section 

440(a), which affects the power of the court rather than the 

rights and obligations of the parties, ... revokes our jurisdiction to review Duldulao's final order of deportation"); Fernandez v. INS, 113 F.3d 1151, 1154 (10th Cir. 1997) (rejecting 

the argument that "section 440(a) should not be applied to 

petitions pending at the time of its enactment, because it 

would eliminate judicial review and vest final authority in an 

administrative agency"); Boston-Bollers v. INS, 106 F.3d 

352, 354 (11th Cir. 1997) (holding that "[a]pplying section 

440(a)(10) to petitions for review of deportation orders pending on the date of the passage of the AEDPA is not retroactive application affecting substantive rights, but is a prospective application of a jurisdiction-eliminating statute").2

__________

2 All of these decisions took place before the Supreme Court 

issued its decisions in Lindh and Hughes. Some of them state that 

they rely on the presumption, which was explicitly rejected by the 

Court in Hughes, that jurisdictional statutes are to be applied 

retroactively. See, e.g., Kolster, 101 F.3d at 788 ("For jurisdictional 

statutes, the presumption is in favor of immediate application...."); 

Mendez-Rosas, 87 F.3d at 674 ("[I]f the statute addresses jurisdictional rules, we presume that it is to be applied retroactively."); 

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One circuit court has held that section 440(a) of the AEDPA did not apply retroactively to a case in which deportability 

was conceded before the AEDPA became law and the petitioner would have had at least a colorable defense to deportability. In subsequent cases, however, the court made clear 

that the holding was limited to the specific circumstances 

presented in that case. In Reyes-Hernandez v. INS, 89 F.3d 

490 (7th Cir. 1996), the Seventh Circuit held that section 

440(a) did not prevent the court from hearing the appeal of a 

legal resident who had conceded deportability and argued 

only for discretionary relief in agency proceedings, and whose 

case was only a few days away from oral argument in the 

circuit court at the time the AEDPA became effective. The 

court explained that since Reyes-Hernandez might have contested deportability in agency proceedings had he known that 

the option of judicial relief would be foreclosed, applying 

section 440(a) to his pending case would be an impermissible 

retroactive application of a statute. Immediately after deciding Reyes-Hernandez, however, the Seventh Circuit began to 

limit and clarify its holding in the case. In Arevalo-Lopez v. 

INS, 104 F.3d 100 (7th Cir. 1997), the court held that it 

lacked jurisdiction to review a BIA denial of discretionary 

relief from deportation to a resident alien whose appeal was 

pending before the court when the AEDPA was enacted 

because section 440(a) of that Act divested the court of 

__________

Duldulao, 90 F.3d at 399 (" '[The] presumption against retroactive 

application of new legislation to pending cases ... does not apply to 

rules conferring or withdrawing jurisdiction.' ") (citation omitted). 

Nonetheless, it appears unlikely that the results would have been 

different had the courts had the benefit of the Supreme Court's 

recent decisions. Indeed, the one circuit court to explicitly consider 

the impact of the Lindh and Hughes decisions on its earlier 

conclusion that section 440(a) applies to pending cases found that 

the Supreme Court's decisions had no effect. See Turkhan v. INS,

123 F.3d 487, 489 n.3 (7th Cir. 1997); see also Mansour v. INS, 123 

F.3d 423, 424-25 (6th Cir. 1997) (restating earlier holding that 

section 440(a) applies to petitions that were pending when AEDPA 

took effect without specifically mentioning Supreme Court's intervening decisions in Hughes and Lindh ); Okoro v. INS, 125 F.3d 

920, 924 (5th Cir. 1997) (same).

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jurisdiction. The court distinguished the case from ReyesHernandez on the grounds that "in this case, petitioner 

contested his deportability at his deportation hearing." Id. at 

101. The court arrived at the same result in Chow v. INS,

113 F.3d 659, 670 (7th Cir. 1997) (holding that section 440(a) 

"does not attach new rights or liabilities to existing actions" 

and therefore must be applied to pending petition of alien 

detainee). Thus, even if this court were to adopt the Seventh 

Circuit's framework, we would not have jurisdiction to review 

LaFontant's case because he contested, at least formally, his 

deportability during his agency proceedings. See Imm. Ct. 

Tr. at 5.

We join the majority of the circuits in concluding that 

application of section 440(a) of the AEDPA to a petition for 

review of a BIA deportation order is not impermissibly 

retroactive. Section 440(a) of the AEDPA falls squarely onto 

the procedure side of the substance/procedure dichotomy 

established by the Supreme Court in Landgraf, Hughes, and 

Lindh for evaluating whether a statute has impermissible 

retroactive effects. Although section 440(a) does give LaFontant's agency proceedings greater finality than LaFontant 

expected at the time they were held, section 440(a) is not 

impermissibly retroactive because it does not attach new 

substantive legal consequences to those proceedings. It does 

not create new legal liabilities, deprive a party of a legal 

defense he would otherwise have had, or otherwise affect the 

substantive rights of the parties before this court. Rather, it 

simply speaks to the power of this court to hear an appeal 

from an agency decision. Thus, even if we accepted petitioner LaFontant's claim that he would have presented different 

arguments and evidence during his agency proceedings 

(though he has not explained exactly what different arguments or evidence he would have offered), this would not be 

sufficient to establish that section 440(a) has an impermissible 

retroactive effect. We therefore hold that application of 

section 440(a) of the AEDPA to LaFontant's petition for 

review is not impermissibly retroactive, and LaFontant's 

petition must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

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B. Fee Requirements of the Prison Litigation Reform Act 

of 1996

Petitioner argues and the government concedes that the fee 

requirements of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 

("PLRA"), Pub. L. No. 104-134, 100 Stat. 1321 (1996), do not 

apply to LaFontant's petition for review of the BIA's deportation order because an incarcerated alien facing deportation is 

not a "prisoner" for purposes of the PLRA. We agree.

The PLRA defines "prisoner" as "any person incarcerated 

or detained in any facility who is accused of, convicted of, 

sentenced for, or adjudicated delinquent for, violations of 

criminal law or the terms and conditions of parole, probation, 

pretrial release, or diversionary program." 28 U.S.C.A. 

§ 1915(h). Although LaFontant was a "prisoner" for purposes of the PLRA when he served time for past convictions, 

he ceased being a "prisoner" at the time he was released on 

parole. When LaFontant was detained by the Attorney 

General under the INA for deportation purposes, he became 

an "alien detainee," not a "prisoner." See Ojo v. INS, 106 

F.3d 680, 683 (5th Cir. 1997) (holding that "the PLRA does 

not bring alien detainees within its sweep"). Thus, we hold 

that the fee requirements of the PLRA do not apply to 

LaFontant's petition for review.

III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we hold that application of 

section 440(a) of the AEDPA, which divests this court of 

jurisdiction to review certain deportation orders, to petitioner 

LaFontant's petition for review is not impermissibly retroactive because section 440(a) is entirely procedural in nature 

and attaches no new substantive legal consequences to events 

that occurred prior to its enactment. We therefore dismiss 

this case for lack of jurisdiction. We also hold that the fee 

requirements of the PLRA do not apply to LaFontant's 

petition for review of the BIA's deportation order because 

LaFontant is not a "prisoner" under the PLRA.

So ordered.

USCA Case #96-1310 Document #329794 Filed: 02/10/1998 Page 14 of 14