Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-459_1o13.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

be held.  Thus, Pereira contends, that notice did not  trig-
ger the stop-time rule, and the clock continued to run. 

The  Board  of  Immigration  Appeals  (BIA)  has  rejected
this interpretation of the stop-time rule in the past.  It has 
held that “[a]n equally plausible reading” is that the stop-
time  rule  “merely  specifies  the  document  the  [Govern-
ment]  must  serve  on  the  alien  to  trigger  the  ‘stop-time’ 
rule  and  does  not  impose  substantive  requirements  for  a 
notice to appear to be effective in order for that trigger to
occur.”  In re Camarillo, 25 I. & N. Dec. 644, 647 (2011).  It 
therefore  held  in  this  case  that  Pereira  is  ineligible  for 
cancellation of removal. 

II
 
A 

Pereira, on one side, and the Government and the BIA, 
on  the  other,  have  a  quasi-metaphysical  disagreement 
about the meaning of the concept of a notice to appear.  Is 
a notice to appear a document that contains certain essen-
tial  characteristics,  namely,  all  the  information  required
by  §1229(a)(1),  so  that  any  notice  that  omits  any  of  that
information  is  not  a  “notice  to  appear”  at  all?    Or  is  a 
notice  to  appear  a  document  that  is  conventionally  called
by  that  name,  so  that  a  notice  that  omits  some  of  the
information required by §1229(a)(1) may still be regarded 
as a “notice to appear”?

Picking  the  better  of  these  two  interpretations  might 
have been a challenge in the first instance.  But the Court 
did not need to decide that question, for under Chevron we 
are  obligated  to  defer  to  a  Government  agency’s  interpre-
tation  of  the  statute  that  it  administers  so  long  as  that 
interpretation  is  a  “ ‘permissible’ ”  one.    INS  v.  Aguirre-
Aguirre, 526 U. S. 415, 424 (1999).  All that is required is
that the Government’s view be “reasonable”; it need not be 
“the only possible interpretation, nor even the interpreta-
tion  deemed  most  reasonable  by  the  courts.”    Entergy