Source: http://www.bardavidlaw.com/research/important-cases/supreme-court-decisions/reno-v-american-arab-anti-discrimination-committee-525-u-s-471-1999
Timestamp: 2018-01-23 11:23:43
Document Index: 701952732

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1252', '§ 1251', '§ 1105', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1105', '§ 2341', '§ 2342', '§ 2347', '§ 2347', '§ 1331', '§ 1329', '§ 1252', '§ 1105', '§ 1105', '§ 1105', '§ 1252', '§ 1105', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 306', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1105', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1221', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 72', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 306', '§ 1252', '§ 1105', '§ 306', '§ 2', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 2', '§ 306', '§ 306', '§ 306', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 309', '§ 306', '§ 306', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 1252', '§ 306', '§ 309', '§ 1105', '§ 306', '§ 1252', '§ 309', '§ 1105', '§ 309', '§ 306', '§ 306', '§ 309', '§ 306', '§ 309', '§ 1105', '§ 1252']

Reno v American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 525 U.S. 471 (1999) | Bardavid Law
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472*472 Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O’Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in which Ginsburg and Breyer, JJ., joined as to Parts I and II. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, in which Breyer, J., joined as to Part I, post, p. 492. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 498. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 501.
Respondents sued petitioners for allegedly targeting them for deportation because of their affiliation with a politically unpopular group. While their suit was pending, Congress 473*473 passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), 110 Stat. 3009-546, which contains a provision restricting judicial review of the Attorney General’s “decision or action” to “commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien under this Act.” 8 U. S. C. § 1252(g) (1994 ed., Supp. III). The issue before us is whether, as petitioners contend, this provision deprives the federal courts of jurisdiction over respondents’ suit.
Almost immediately, the aliens filed suit in District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the anticommunism provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Attorney General, the INS, and various immigration officials in their personal and official capacities. The INS responded by dropping the advocacyof-communism 474*474 charges, but it retained the technical violation charges against the six temporary residents and charged Hamide and Shehadeh, who were permanent residents, under a different section of the McCarran-Walter Act, which authorized the deportation of aliens who were members of an organization advocating “the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any [government] officer or officers” and “the unlawful damage, injury, or destruction of property.” See 8 U. S. C. §§ 1251(a)(6)(F)(ii)— (iii) (1982 ed.).[2] INS regional counsel William Odencrantz said at a press conference that the charges had been changed for tactical reasons but the INS was still seeking respondents’ deportation because of their affiliation with the PFLP. See American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee v. Reno, 70 F. 3d 1045, 1053 (CA9 1995) (AADC I) . Respondents amended their complaint to include an allegation that the INS was selectively enforcing immigration laws against them in violation of their First and Fifth Amendment rights.[3]
Since this suit seeking to prevent the initiation of deportation proceedings was filed—in 1987, during the administration of Attorney General Edwin Meese—it has made four trips through the District Court for the Central District of California and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The first two concerned jurisdictional issues not now before us. See Hamide v. United States District Court, No. 87-7249 (CA9, Feb. 24, 1988); American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee v. Thornburgh, 970 F. 2d 475*475 501 (CA9 1991). Then, in 1994, the District Court preliminarily enjoined deportation proceedings against the six temporary residents, holding that they were likely to prove that the INS did not enforce routine status requirements against immigrants who were not members of disfavored terrorist groups and that the possibility of deportation, combined with the chill to their First Amendment rights while the proceedings were pending, constituted irreparable injury. With regard to Hamide and Shehadeh’s claims, however, the District Court granted summary judgment to the federal parties for reasons not pertinent here.
While the Attorney General’s appeal of this last decision was pending, Congress passed IIRIRA which, inter alia, repealed the old judicial-review scheme set forth in § 1105a and instituted a new (and significantly more restrictive) one in 8 U. S. C. § 1252. The Attorney General filed motions in both the District Court and Court of Appeals, arguing that § 1252(g) deprived them of jurisdiction over respondents’ selective-enforcement claim. The District Court denied the motion, and the Attorney General’s appeal from that denial 476*476 was consolidated with the appeal already pending in the Ninth Circuit.
Before enactment of IIRIRA, judicial review of most administrative action under the INA was governed by 8 U. S. C. § 1105a, a special statutory-review provision directing that “the sole and exclusive procedure for . . . the judicial review of all final orders of deportation” shall be that set forth in the Hobbs Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2341 et seq., which gives exclusive jurisdiction to the courts of appeals, see § 2342. Much of the Court of Appeals’ analysis in AADC I was devoted to the question whether this pre-IIRIRA provision applied to selective-enforcement claims. Since neither the Immigration Judge nor the Board of Immigration Appeals has authority to hear such claims (a point conceded by the Attorney General in AADC I, see 70 F. 3d, at 1055), a challenge to a final order of deportation based upon such a claim would arrive in the court of appeals without the factual development necessary for decision. The Attorney General argued unsuccessfully below that the Hobbs Act permits a court of appeals to remand the case to the agency, see 28 U. S. C. § 2347(c), or transfer it to a district court, see § 2347(b)(3), for further factfinding. The Ninth Circuit, believing these options unavailable, concluded that an original district-court action was respondents’ only means of obtaining factual development and thus judicial review of their selectiveenforcement 477*477 claims. Relying on our decision in Cheng Fan Kwok v. INS, 392 U. S. 206 (1968), it held that the District Court could entertain the suit under either its general federal-question jurisdiction, see 28 U. S. C. § 1331, or the general jurisdictional provision of the INA, see 8 U. S. C. § 1329.[4]
“(g) Exclusive Jurisdiction “Except as provided in this section and notwithstanding any other provision of law, no court shall have jurisdiction 478*478 to hear any cause or claim by or on behalf of any alien arising from the decision or action by the Attorney General to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien under this Act.”
479*479 The Attorney General would have us avoid the horns of this dilemma by interpreting § 1252(g)’s phrase “[e]xcept as provided in this section” to mean “except as provided in § 1105a.” Because § 1105a authorizes review of only final orders, respondents must, she says, wait until their administrative proceedings come to a close and then seek review in a court of appeals. (For reasons mentioned above, the Attorney General of course rejects the Ninth Circuit’s position in AADC I that application of § 1105a would leave respondents without a judicial forum because evidence of selective prosecution cannot be introduced into the administrative record.) The obvious difficulty with the Attorney General’s interpretation is that it is impossible to understand how the qualifier in § 1252(g), “[e]xcept as provided in this section” (emphasis added), can possibly mean “except as provided in § 1105a.” And indeed the Attorney General makes no attempt to explain how this can be, except to observe that what she calls a “literal application” of the statute “would create an anomalous result.” Brief for Petitioners 30, n. 15.
Respondents note this deficiency, but offer an equally implausible means of avoiding the dilemma. Section 309(c)(3) allows the Attorney General to terminate pending deportation proceedings and reinitiate them under § 1252.[6] They argue that § 1252(g) applies only to those pending cases in which the Attorney General has made that election. That way, they claim, the phrase “[e]xcept as provided in this section” can, without producing an anomalous result, be allowed to refer (as it says) to all the rest of § 1252. But this approach collides head-on with § 306(c)’s prescription that § 1252(g) shall apply “without limitation to claims arising from all past, pending, or future exclusion, deportation, or removal proceedings.” See note following 8 U. S. C. § 1252 (1994 ed., Supp. III) (emphasis added). (Respondents argue 480*480 in the alternative, of course, that if the Attorney General is right and § 1105a does apply, AADC I is correct that their claims will be effectively unreviewable upon entry of a final order. For this reason, and because they say that habeas review, if still available after IIRIRA,[7] will come too late to remedy this First Amendment injury, respondents contend that we must construe § 1252(g) not to bar constitutional claims.)
It recognized, however, the existence of the other horn of the dilemma (“that retroactive application of the entire amended version of 8 U. S. C. § 1252 would threaten to render meaningless section 306(c) of IIRIRA,” ibid. ), and resolved the difficulty to its satisfaction by concluding that “at least some of the other provisions of section 1252″ must be included in 481*481 subsection (g) “when it applies to pending cases.” Ibid. (emphasis added). One of those provisions, it thought, must be subsection (f), entitled “Limit on Injunctive Relief,” which reads as follows:
Even respondents scarcely try to defend the Ninth Circuit’s reading of § 1252(f) as a jurisdictional grant. By its plain terms, and even by its title, that provision is nothing more or less than a limit on injunctive relief. It prohibits federal courts from granting classwide injunctive relief against the operation of §§ 1221-1231, but specifies that this 482*482 ban does not extend to individual cases. To find in this an affirmative grant of jurisdiction is to go beyond what the language will bear.
It is implausible that the mention of three discrete events along the road to deportation was a shorthand way of referring to all claims arising from deportation proceedings. Not because Congress is too unpoetic to use synecdoche, but because that literary device is incompatible with the need for precision in legislative drafting. We are aware of no other instance in the United States Code in which language such as this has been used to impose a general jurisdictional limitation; and that those who enacted IIRIRA were familiar with the normal manner of imposing such a limitation is demonstrated 483*483 by the text of § 1252(b)(9), which stands in stark contrast to § 1252(g).
There was good reason for Congress to focus special attention upon, and make special provision for, judicial review of the Attorney General’s discrete acts of “commenc[ing] proceedings, adjudicat[ing] cases, [and] execut[ing] removal orders”—which represent the initiation or prosecution of various stages in the deportation process. At each stage the Executive has discretion to abandon the endeavor, and at the time IIRIRA was enacted the INS had been engaging in a 484*484 regular practice (which had come to be known as “deferred action”) of exercising that discretion for humanitarian reasons or simply for its own convenience.[8] As one treatise describes it:
“[I]n each such instance, the determination to withhold or terminate deportation is confined to administrative 485*485 discretion. .. . Efforts to challenge the refusal to exercise such discretion on behalf of specific aliens sometimes have been favorably considered by the courts, upon contentions that there was selective prosecution in violation of equal protection or due process, such as improper reliance on political considerations, on racial, religious, or nationality discriminations, on arbitrary or unconstitutional criteria, or on other grounds constituting abuse of discretion.” Gordon, Mailman, & YaleLoehr, supra, § 72.03[2][a] (footnotes omitted).
486*486 Of course many provisions of IIRIRA are aimed at protecting the Executive’s discretion from the courts—indeed, that can fairly be said to be the theme of the legislation. See, e. g., 8 U. S. C. § 1252(a)(2)(A) (limiting review of any claim arising from the inspection of aliens arriving in the United States); § 1252(a)(2)(B) (barring review of denials of discretionary relief authorized by various statutory provisions); § 1252(a)(2)(C) (barring review of final removal orders 487*487 against criminal aliens); § 1252(b)(4)(D) (limiting review of asylum determinations for resident aliens). It is entirely understandable, however, why Congress would want only the discretion-protecting provision of § 1252(g) applied even to pending cases: because that provision is specifically directed at the deconstruction, fragmentation, and hence prolongation of removal proceedings.
Finally, we must address respondents’ contention that, since the lack of prior factual development for their claim will render the § 1252(a)(1) exception to § 1252(g) unavailing; since habeas relief will also be unavailable; and since even if 488*488 one or both were available they would come too late to prevent the “chilling effect” upon their First Amendment rights; the doctrine of constitutional doubt requires us to interpret § 1252(g) in such fashion as to permit immediate review of their selective-enforcement claims. We do not believe that the doctrine of constitutional doubt has any application here. As a general matter—and assuredly in the context of claims such as those put forward in the present case—an alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation.[10]
489*489 Even in the criminal-law field, a selective prosecution claim is a rara avis. Because such claims invade a special province of the Executive—its prosecutorial discretion—we have emphasized that the standard for proving them is particularly demanding, requiring a criminal defendant to introduce “clear evidence” displacing the presumption that a prosecutor has acted lawfully. United States v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456, 463-465 (1996). We have said:
“This broad discretion [afforded the Executive] rests largely on the recognition that the decision to prosecute 490*490 is particularly ill-suited to judicial review. Such factors as the strength of the case, the prosecution’s general deterrence value, the Government’s enforcement priorities, and the case’s relationship to the Government’s overall enforcement plan are not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are competent to undertake. Judicial supervision in this area, moreover, entails systemic costs of particular concern. Examining the basis of a prosecution delays the criminal proceeding, threatens to chill law enforcement by subjecting the prosecutor’s motives and decisionmaking to outside inquiry, and may undermine prosecutorial effectiveness by revealing the Government’s enforcement policy. All of these are substantial concerns that make the courts properly hesitant to examine the decision whether to prosecute.” Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 607— 608 (1985).
These concerns are greatly magnified in the deportation context. Regarding, for example, the potential for delay: Whereas in criminal proceedings the consequence of delay is merely to postpone the criminal’s receipt of his just deserts, in deportation proceedings the consequence is to permit and prolong a continuing violation of United States law. Postponing justifiable deportation (in the hope that the alien’s status will change—by, for example, marriage to an American citizen—or simply with the object of extending the alien’s unlawful stay) is often the principal object of resistance to a deportation proceeding, and the additional obstacle of selective-enforcement suits could leave the INS hard pressed to enforce routine status requirements. And as for “chill[ing] law enforcement by subjecting the prosecutor’s motives and decisionmaking to outside inquiry”: What will be involved in deportation cases is not merely the disclosure of normal domestic law enforcement priorities and techniques, 491*491 but often the disclosure of foreign-policy objectives and (as in this case) foreign-intelligence products and techniques. The Executive should not have to disclose its “real” reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special threat—or indeed for simply wishing to antagonize a particular foreign country by focusing on that country’s nationals—and even if it did disclose them a court would be ill equipped to determine their authenticity and utterly unable to assess their adequacy. Moreover, the consideration on the other side of the ledger in deportation cases—the interest of the target in avoiding “selective” treatment—is less compelling than in criminal prosecutions. While the consequences of deportation may assuredly be grave, they are not imposed as a punishment, see Carlson v. Landon, 342 U. S. 524, 537 (1952). In many cases (for six of the eight aliens here) deportation is sought simply because the time of permitted residence in this country has expired, or the activity for which residence was permitted has been completed. Even when deportation is sought because of some act the alien has committed, in principle the alien is not being punished for that act (criminal charges may be available for that separate purpose) but is merely being held to the terms under which he was admitted. And in all cases, deportation is necessary in order to bring to an end an ongoing violation of United States law. The contention that a violation must be allowed to continue because it has been improperly selected is not powerfully appealing.
To resolve the present controversy, we need not rule out the possibility of a rare case in which the alleged basis of discrimination is so outrageous that the foregoing considerations can be overcome. Whether or not there be such exceptions, the general rule certainly applies here. When an alien’s continuing presence in this country is in violation of the immigration laws, the Government does not offend the 492*492 Constitution by deporting him for the additional reason that it believes him to be a member of an organization that supports terrorist activity.
Respondents argue that they are suffering irreparable injury to their First Amendment rights and therefore require instant review of their selective enforcement claims. We have not previously determined the circumstances under which the Constitution requires immediate judicial intervention in federal administrative proceedings of this order. Respondents point to our cases addressing federal injunctions 493*493 that stop state proceedings, in order to secure constitutional rights. They feature in this regard Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479 (1965), as interpreted in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 47-53 (1971). Respondents also refer to Oestereich v. Selective Serv. System Local Bd. No. 11, 393 U. S. 233 (1968). Those cases provide a helpful framework.
494*494 In Oestereich, the Selective Service Board had withdrawn a ministry student’s statutory exemption from the draft after he engaged in an act of protest. See 393 U. S., at 234. The student brought suit to restrain his induction, and this Court allowed the suit to go forward, notwithstanding a statutory bar of preinduction judicial review. Finding the Board’s action “blatantly lawless,” the Court concluded that to require the student to raise his claim through habeas corpus or as a defense to a criminal prosecution would be “to construe the Act with unnecessary harshness.” Id., at 238.
Relying on Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Assn., 457 U. S. 423 (1982), respondents argue that their inability to raise their selective enforcement claims 495*495 during the administrative proceedings, see ante, at 476, makes immediate judicial intervention necessary. As we explained in Middlesex County, Younger abstention is appropriate only when there is “an adequate opportunity in the state proceedings to raise constitutional challenges.” 457 U. S., at 432; see Ohio Civil Rights Comm’n v. Dayton Christian Schools, Inc., 477 U. S. 619, 629 (1986) (even if complainants could not raise their First Amendment objections in the administrative hearing, it sufficed that objections could be aired in state-court judicial review of any administrative decision). Here, Congress has established an integrated scheme for deportation proceedings, channeling judicial review to the final order, and deferring issues outside the agency’s authority until that point. Given Congress’ strong interest in avoiding delay of deportation proceedings, see ante, at 490, I find the opportunity to raise a claim during the judicial review phase sufficient.
Section 1252(a)(1) authorizes judicial review of “final order[s] of removal.” We have previously construed such “final order” language to authorize judicial review of “all matters on which the validity of the final order is contingent, rather than only those determinations actually made at the hearing.” INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 938 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted). Whether there is here a need for factfinding beyond the administrative record is a matter properly postponed. I note, however, the Attorney General’s 496*496 position that the reviewing court of appeals may transfer a case to a district court for resolution of pertinent issues of material fact, see Brief for Petitioners 44, 48-49, and n. 23,[2] and counsel’s assurance at oral argument that petitioners will adhere to that position, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 5-6.[3]
497*497 II
It is well settled that “[f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, 148 (1945). Under our selective prosecution doctrine, “the decision to prosecute may not be deliberately based upon an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification, including the exercise of protected statutory and constitutional rights.” Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 608 (1985) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). I am not persuaded that selective enforcement of deportation laws should be exempt from that prescription. If the Government decides to deport an alien “for reasons forbidden by the Constitution,” United States v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456, 463 (1996), it does not seem to me that redress for the constitutional violation should turn on the gravity of the governmental sanction. Deportation, in any event, is a grave sanction. As this Court has long recognized, “[t]hat deportation is a penalty— at times a most serious one—cannot be doubted.” Bridges, 326 U. S., at 154; see also ibid. (Deportation places “the liberty 498*498 of an individual . . . at stake. . . . Though deportation is not technically a criminal proceeding, it visits a great hardship on the individual and deprives him of the right to stay and live and work in this land of freedom.”); G. Neuman, Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law 162 (1996) (“Deportation has a far harsher impact on most resident aliens than many conceded `punishment[s]’ . . . . Uprooting the alien from home, friends, family, and work would be severe regardless of the country to which the alien was being returned; breaking these attachments inflicts more pain than preventing them from being made.”).
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA or Act) is a part of an omnibus enactment that occupies 750 pages in the Statutes at Large. Pub. L. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546. It is not surprising that it contains a scrivener’s error. See Green v. Bock 499*499 Laundry Machine Co., 490 U. S. 504, 511 (1989). Despite that error, Congress’ intended disposition of cases like this is plain. It must be dismissed.
If we substitute the word “Act” for the word “section” in the introductory clause of § 1252(g), the impact of this provision on pending proceedings is equally clear. That substitution would remove any obstacle to giving effect to the plain meaning of IIRIRA §§ 306(c)(1) and 309(c)(1). The former defines the effective date of the Act and makes § 1252(g)’s 500*500 prohibition against collateral attacks effective immediately;[3] the latter makes the new rules inapplicable to aliens in exclusion or deportation proceedings pending before the INS on the effective date of the Act.[4] Judicial review of those administrative proceedings remains available in the courts of appeal under the old statutory regime. See 8 U. S. C. § 1105a.
To summarize, I think a fair reading of all relevant provisions in the statute makes it clear that Congress intended its prohibition of collateral attacks on ongoing INS proceedings 501*501 to become effective immediately while providing that pending administrative proceedings should be completed under the scheme of judicial review in effect when they were commenced.
The first of the contradictory provisions is put in play by § 306(c)(1) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), 110 Stat. 3009-612, as 502*502 amended by § 2of the Act of Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3657, which makes new 8 U. S. C. § 1252(g) (1994 ed., Supp. III) immediately applicable as of the date of its enactment (i. e., October 11,1996) to “claims arising from all past, pending, or future” removal proceedings. Subsection (g), for its part, bars review in any court of “the decision or action by the Attorney General to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien,” except as provided in § 1252. The exception, however, is cold comfort to applicants for review of proceedings pending when IIRIRA took effect, because the rest of § 1252 is inapplicable to “an alien who is in exclusion or deportation proceedings” on the effective date of IIRIRA, April 1, 1997. Section 309(c)(1)(A) of IIRIRA, 110 Stat. 3009-625, as amended by § 2 of the Act of Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3657. Hence, by operation of § 306(c)(1), it would appear that aliens who did not obtain judicial review as of the enactment date of October 11,1996, and who were in proceedings as of IIRIRA’s effective date of April 1, 1997, can never obtain judicial review of “the decision or action by the Attorney General to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien” in any forum. In short, § 306(c)(1) appears to bar members of this class of aliens from any review of any aspect of their claims.
Yet § 306(c)(1) is not the only statutory provision applicable to aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997. Section 309(c)(1)(B) provides that, in the case of aliens in proceedings before the effective date, “the proceedings (including judicial review thereof) shall continue to be conducted without regard to [new § 1252].” The parenthetical expression in this section specifically provides that the judicial review available to aliens before the April 1, 1997, effective date of § 1252 continues to be available even after the effective date to aliens who were already in proceedings before the effective date. In other words, the terms of § 309(c)(1)(B) preserve 503*503 pre-existing judicial review for the self-same class of aliens to whom § 306(c)(1) bars review.
We do not have to dwell on how this contradiction arose.[1] What matters for our purposes is that §§ 306(c)(1) 504*504 and 309(c)(1) cannot be reconciled. Either aliens in proceedings on April 1, 1997, have no access to judicial review or else they have the access available under the law that applied before § 1252 came into effect.[2]
505*505 The Court acknowledges the existence of an “interpretive anomaly,” ante, at 478, and attempts to avoid the contradiction by a creative interpretation of § 1252(g). It reads the § 1252(g) bar to review of “the decision or action by the Attorney General to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien” to “appl[y] only to three discrete actions that the Attorney General may take.” Ante, at 482. The Court claims that a bar to review of commencement of proceedings, adjudication of cases, and execution of removal orders does not bar review of every sort of claim, because “many other decisions or actions that may be part of the deportation process,” ibid., remain unaffected by the limitation of § 1252(g). On this reading, the Court says, review of some aspects of the Attorney General’s possible actions regarding aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997, is preserved, even though the rest of § 1252 does not apply. The actions that still may be reviewed when challenged by aliens already in proceedings before the effective date of IIRIRA include, the Court tells us, “decisions to open an investigation, to surveil the suspected violator, to reschedule the deportation hearing, to include various provisions in the final order that is the product of the adjudication, and to refuse reconsideration of that order.” Ibid.
The Court’s interpretation, it seems to me, parses the language of subsection (g) too finely for the business at hand. The chronological march from commencing proceedings, through adjudicating cases, to executing removal orders, surely gives a reasonable first impression of speaking exhaustively. While it is grammatically possible to read the series without total inclusion, ibid., the implausibility of doing this appears the moment one asks why Congress would have wanted to preserve interim review of the particular set of decisions by the Attorney General to which the Court 506*506 adverts. It is hard to imagine that Congress meant to bar aliens already in proceedings before the effective date from challenging the commencement of proceedings against them, but to permit the same aliens to challenge, say, the decision of the Attorney General to open an investigation of them or to issue a show-cause order. Nor is there a plausible explanation of why the exclusivity provisions of subsection (g) should not apply after the effective date to review of decisions to open investigations or invite cause to be shown.
The Court offers two arguments in support of its ingenious reading, neither of which suffices to convince me of its plausibility. First, the Court suggests that Congress could not have intended the words “commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, and execute removal orders” to refer to all deportation-related claims, because this would require these parts of deportation proceedings to stand for the whole of the process, and such a use of language “is incompatible with the need for precision in legislative drafting.” Ibid. But without delving into the wisdom of using rhetorical figures in statutory drafting, one can still conclude naturally that Congress employed three subject headings to bar review of all those stages in the deportation process to which challenges might conceivably be brought. Indeed, each one of the Court’s examples of reviewable actions of the Attorney General falls comfortably into one or another of the three phases of the deportation process captured under the headings of commencement, adjudication, and removal. The decisions to open an investigation or subject an alien to surveillance belong to the commencement of proceedings (which presumably differs from adjudication, separately mentioned); issuing an order to show cause, composing the final order, and refusing reconsideration all easily belong to an adjudication. Far from employing synecdoche, Congress used familiar, general terms to refer to the familiar stages of the exclusion process, and the acceptability of interpreting the three 507*507 items to exclude others requires considerable determination to indulge in such a reading.
Because I cannot subscribe to the Court’s attempt to render the inclusive series incomplete, I have to confront the irreconcilable contradiction between § 306(c)(1) and § 309(c)(1). Both context and principle point me to the conclusion that the latter provision must prevail over the former. First, it seems highly improbable that Congress actually 508*508 intended to raise a permanent barrier to judicial review for aliens in proceedings ongoing on April 1, 1997. Judicial review was available under old 8 U. S. C. § 1105a to those aliens whose proceedings concluded before the enactment of the amended § 306(c)(1) on October 11, 1996, and judicial review of a different scope is also available under new 8 U. S. C. § 1252 (1994 ed., Supp. III) to those whose proceedings commenced after the effective date of IIRIRA, April 1, 1997. There is no reason whatever to believe that Congress intentionally singled out for especially harsh treatment the hapless aliens who were in proceedings during the interim. This point is underscored by transitional § 309(c)(4)(A), which expressly applies subsections (a) and (c) of old 8 U. S. C. § 1105a (but not subsection (b) thereof) to judicial review of final orders of deportation or exclusion filed more than 30 days after the date of enactment. Section 309(c)(4)(A), in other words, contemplates judicial review of final orders of exclusion against aliens who were in proceedings as of the date of enactment.
Second, complete preclusion of judicial review of any kind for claims brought by aliens subject to proceedings for removal would raise the serious constitutional question whether Congress may block every remedy for enforcing a constitutional right. See Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 681, n. 12 (1986). The principle of constitutional doubt counsels against adopting the interpretation that raises this question. “[W]here a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter.” United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 408 (1909); see also United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U. S. 394, 401 (1916). Here, constitutional doubt lends considerable weight to the view that § 309(c)(1) ought to prevail over § 306(c)(1) and preserve judicial review under the law as it was before the enactment 509*509 of IIRIRA for aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997. While I do not lightly reach the conclusion that § 306(c)(1) is essentially without force, my respect for Congress’s intent in enacting § 309(c)(1) is necessarily balanced by respect for Congress’s intent in enacting § 306(c)(1). No canon of statutory construction familiar to me specifically addresses the situation in which two simultaneously enacted provisions of the same statute flatly contradict one another.[3] We are, of course, bound to avoid such a dilemma if we can, by glimpsing some uncontradicted meaning for each provision. But the attempt to salvage an application for each must have some stopping place, and the Court’s attempt here seems to me to go beyond that point. In this anomalous situation where the two statutory provisions are fundamentally at odds, constitutional doubt will have to serve as the best guide to breaking the tie.
Because I think that § 309(c)(1) applies to aliens in proceedings before April 1, 1997, I think it applies to respondents in this case. The law governing their proceedings and subsequent judicial review should therefore be the law prevailing before IIRIRA. That law, in my view, afforded respondents an opportunity to litigate their claims before the District Court. Former 8 U. S. C. § 1105a(a) governed “judicial review of all final orders of deportation.” For actions that fell outside the scope of this provision, an “alien’s remedies would, of course, ordinarily lie first in an action brought in an appropriate district court.” Cheng Fan Kwok v. INS, 392 U. S. 206, 210 (1968). In McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U. S. 479 (1991), we applied this principle in 510*510 finding a right of action before the district court in a constitutional challenge to procedures of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Respondents’ challenge to the constitutionality of their prosecution was filed prior to the entry of a final order of deportation, and so district court jurisdiction was appropriate here.[4]
The approach I would take in this case avoids a troubling problem that the Court chooses to address despite the fact that it was not briefed before the Court: whether selective prosecution claims have vitality in the immigration context. Of course, in principle, the Court’s approach itself obviates the need to address that issue: if respondents’ suit is barred by § 1252(g), the Court need not address the merits of their claims. Yet the Court goes on, in what I take as dictum,[5] to argue that the alien’s interest in avoiding selective treatment in the deportation context “is less compelling than in criminal prosecutions,” ante, at 491, either because the alien is not 511*511 being punished for an act he has committed, or because the presence of an alien in the United States is,unlike a past crime, “an ongoing violation of United States law,” ibid. (emphasis deleted). While the distinctions are clear, the difference is not. The interest in avoiding selective enforcement of the criminal law, shared by the government and the accused, is that prosecutorial discretion not be exercised to violate constitutionally prescribed guaranties of equality or liberty. See United States v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456, 464— 465 (1996); Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 608 (1985). This interest applies to the like degree in immigration litigation, and is not attenuated because the deportation is not a penalty for a criminal act or because the violation is ongoing. If authorities prosecute only those tax evaders against whom they bear some prejudice or whose protected liberties they wish to curtail, the ongoing nature of the nonpayers’ violation does not obviate the interest against selective prosecution.