Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-437_new_qol1.pdf
Page Number: 7

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

II 
The  Ninth  Circuit’s  interpretation  is  incompatible  with
the text of §1326(d).  That section provides that defendants 
charged  with  unlawful  reentry  “may  not”  challenge  their
underlying  removal  orders  “unless”  they  “demonstrat[e]”
that three conditions are met: (1) they have “exhausted any
administrative remedies,” (2) they were “deprived . . . of the 
opportunity  for  judicial  review,”  and  (3)  “the  entry  of  the 
order was fundamentally unfair.”  8 U. S. C. §1326(d).  The 
requirements  are  connected  by  the  conjunctive  “and,”
meaning defendants must meet all three.  When Congress
uses  “mandatory  language”  in  an  administrative  exhaus-
tion provision, “a court may not excuse a failure to exhaust.” 
Ross v. Blake, 578 U. S. 632, 639 (2016).  Yet that is what 
the Ninth Circuit’s rule does. 

Without the benefit of the Ninth Circuit’s extrastatutory
exception, §1326(d)’s first two procedural requirements are 
not satisfied just because a noncitizen was removed for an
offense that did not in fact render him removable.  Indeed, 
the  substantive  validity  of  the  removal  order  is  quite  dis-
tinct from whether the noncitizen exhausted his adminis-
trative remedies (by appealing the immigration judge’s de-
cision  to  the  BIA)  or  was  deprived  of  the  opportunity  for 
judicial review (by filing a petition for review of a BIA deci-
sion with a Federal Court of Appeals). 

III 
Palomar-Santiago raises two counterarguments based on
the text of §1326(d).2  Neither is persuasive.  First, he con-
tends that further administrative review of a removal order 

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2 Palomar-Santiago  separately  argues  that  the  offense  defined  by
§1326(a) includes as an element the defendant’s previous lawful removal
such that unlawful removals cannot support a conviction.  United States 
v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U. S. 828, 834–835 (1987), rejected a similar ar-
gument  with respect  to  the  pre-AEDPA  version  of  §1326(a).    Palomar-
Santiago  now  presses  various  distinctions  between  that  case  and  this,