Opinion ID: 64039
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Due to Failure to Warn

Text: In his second argument, Santos-Sanchez asserts that the district court erred in finding no ineffective assistance due to his counsel's failure to warn him of the immigration consequences of a guilty plea. The district court held that counsel was not required to advise Santos-Sanchez of the immigration consequences of his guilty plea because, under our decision in Banda, deportation is a collateral consequence of a guilty plea. See Banda, 1 F.3d at 355 (holding that an attorney's failure to advise a client that deportation is a possible consequence of a guilty plea does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel). This court has clearly stated that [d]efense counsel has done all he must under the Constitution when he advises his client of the direct consequences of a guilty plea. Id. at 356. That is, counsel's failure to inform a defendant of the collateral consequences of a guilty plea is never deficient performance under Strickland. [4] Santos-Sanchez suggests, however, that our decision in Banda left open the question of whether an attorney's failure to advise a client that deportation is a certain consequence of a guilty plea constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. Santos-Sanchez suggests that certain deportation is a direct consequence of a guilty plea, and an attorney must therefore inquire about her client's immigration status and inform her client of this consequence. Santos-Sanchez misconstrues our decision in Banda. In Banda, we held that deportationnot the possibility of deportationwas a collateral consequence of the criminal process. See id. at 356 (likening deportation, not the possibility of deportation, to the other collateral consequences of a guilty plea such as loss of the right to vote and right to travel, and noting that [f]ailure by counsel to advise a client of these or any other collateral eventualities would not constitute a Sixth Amendment violation). The likelihood that a defendant would be deported was irrelevant to this determination. Therefore, under Banda, counsel's failure to inquire into Santos-Sanchez's immigration status and inform him of his likely deportation was not deficient performance and thus did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel. Santos-Sanchez notes that recent changes in immigration laws, particularly the closure of avenues for discretionary relief from deportation in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), Pub.L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546, have rendered deportation a certainty for some defendants that enter guilty pleas. Santos-Sanchez suggests changes in the law have so altered the nature of deportation that it is now in some cases a direct consequence of a guilty plea. Santos-Sanchez thus asserts that, at least in cases where deportation is a near-certain consequence of a guilty plea, counsel must inform defendants of the immigration consequences of their guilty plea to provide effective assistance. This argument has been working its way through the circuit courts. In the first case to address this issue, the First Circuit held that IIRIRA did not alter the court's prior holding that deportation was a collateral consequence of a guilty plea. See United States v. Gonzalez, 202 F.3d 20, 28 (1st Cir.2000). The court first noted that the immigration consequences of a plea are collateral irrespective of the reason for which an alien is deemed deportable. Id. at 26. It went on to state that [w]hat renders the plea's immigration effects collateral is not that they arise virtually by operation of law, but the fact that deportation is not the sentence of the court which accepts the plea but of another agency over which the trial judge has no control and for which he has no responsibility. Id. at 27 (quotations and alterations omitted). The court reasoned that, regardless of how automatic IIRIRA might have rendered deportation, it was still beyond the control and responsibility of the district court. Id. The First Circuit thus reject[ed] the argument that [IIRIRA has] so altered the relationship between conviction and deportation that revisitation of [its] prior holdings on that relationship [was] required. Id. at 28. Consequently, the collateral nature of deportation bar[red] any ineffective assistance claims based on an attorney's failure to advise a client of his plea's immigration consequences. Id. The Tenth Circuit came to the same conclusion in Broomes v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 1251 (10th Cir.2004). Like the First Circuit, the Tenth Circuit had previously held that `deportation is a collateral consequence of the criminal proceeding and therefore the failure to advise does not amount to ineffective assistance of counsel.' Id. at 1256 (quoting Varela v. Kaiser, 976 F.2d 1357, 1358 (10th Cir.1992)). In Broomes, the court held that neither IIRIRA nor the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Pub.L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, altered the collateral nature of deportation. Broomes, 358 F.3d at 1256-57. As the court noted, [a] consequence is collateral if it `remains beyond the control and responsibility of the district court in which that conviction was entered.' Id. at 1256 (quoting Gonzalez, 202 F.3d at 27). The Tenth Circuit thus concluded that [s]tate courts have no more control over whether a criminal defendant will be deported today than they did prior to the 1996 Acts. Accordingly, deportation remains a collateral consequence of a criminal conviction, and counsel's failure to advise a criminal defendant of its possibility does not result in a Sixth Amendment deprivation. Id. at 1257. We agree with the First and Tenth Circuits that the changes wrought by IIRIRA have not so altered the nature of deportation as to wholly undermine our holding in Banda. We, like our sister circuits, have drawn a bright line between the direct and collateral consequences of a guilty plea and require that counsel advise a defendant of only the former. And also like our sister circuits, we have limited the direct consequences of a guilty plea to the immediate and automatic consequences of that plea such as the maximum sentence length or fine. Duke v. Cockrell, 292 F.3d 414, 417 (5th Cir.2002). Under Banda, regardless of certainty, deportation is a collateral consequence of a guilty plea. [5] Consequently, Santos-Sanchez's counsel was not required to inform him of the immigration consequences of his guilty plea for counsel's assistance to be effective. Because we hold that Santos-Sanchez has failed to prove that his counsel's performance was deficient, we need not address whether he has established prejudice. See United States v. Stewart, 207 F.3d 750, 751 (5th Cir.2000) (per curiam) (A court need not address both components of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim if the movant makes an insufficient showing on one.). Thus, we affirm the district court's conclusion that Santos-Sanchez failed to establish that his counsel provided ineffective assistance due to either affirmative misrepresentation or failure to warn.