Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-459_1o13.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

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

11 

Opinion of the Court 

must  include  the  time  and  place  of  the  removal  proceed-
ings to trigger the stop-time rule.  Section 1229(b)(1) gives
a noncitizen “the opportunity to secure counsel before the 
first  [removal]  hearing  date”  by  mandating  that  such
“hearing date shall not be scheduled earlier than 10 days
after the service of the notice to appear.”  For §1229(b)(1)
to  have  any  meaning,  the  “notice  to  appear”  must  specify
the  time  and  place  that  the  noncitizen,  and  his  counsel, 
must  appear  at  the  removal  hearing.    Otherwise,  the 
Government  could  serve  a  document  labeled  “notice  to 
appear” without listing the time and location of the hear-
ing  and  then,  years  down  the  line,  provide  that  infor-
mation a day before the removal hearing when it becomes 
available.  Under  that  view  of  the  statute,  a  noncitizen 
theoretically  would  have  had  the  “opportunity  to  secure
counsel,”  but  that  opportunity  will  not  be  meaningful  if, 
given the absence of a specified time and place, the noncit-
izen  has  minimal  time  and  incentive  to  plan  accordingly,
and  his  counsel,  in  turn,  receives  limited  notice  and  time 
to  prepare  adequately.    It  therefore  follows  that,  if  a  “no-
tice  to  appear”  for  purposes  of  §1229(b)(1)  must  include
the  time-and-place  information,  a  “notice  to  appear”  for 
purposes of the stop-time rule under §1229b(d)(1) must as 
well.  After  all,  “it  is  a  normal  rule  of  statutory  construc-
tion  that  identical  words  used  in  different  parts  of  the 
same  act  are  intended  to  have  the  same  meaning.” 
Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U. S. 560, 571 
(2012) (internal quotation marks omitted).6 

—————— 

6 The dissent argues that, if a notice to appear must furnish time-and-
place  information,  the  Government  “may  be  forced  by  the  Court’s
interpretation  to  guess  that  the  hearing  will  take  place  far  in  the
future,  only  to  learn  shortly  afterwards  that  the  hearing  is  in  fact
imminent.”  Post, at 14.  In such a scenario, the dissent hypothesizes, a 
noncitizen  would  be  “lulled  into  a  false  sense  of  security”  and  thus 
would have little meaningful opportunity to secure counsel and prepare