Opinion ID: 797989
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Whether the Petitioners Have a Counterpart Ground of Exclusion

Text: 46 The government believes we should defer to the BIA's comparable grounds analysis, which held each petitioner ineligible for a § 212(c) waiver. Petitioners contend their aggravated felony ground of deportation has a counterpart in the ground of exclusion for crimes of moral turpitude because all aggravated felonies are crimes of moral turpitude, or, in the alternative, their individual aggravated felonies could form the basis of a ground of exclusion. We find no reason to defer to the BIA's interpretation of the statutory counterpart rule and conclude that the BIA's comparable grounds analysis fails to comport with Francis. 47
48 The government's argument for deference rests on Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). Chevron 's familiar rubric requires a court to defer to an agency's interpretation of a statute it is charged with enforcing should the court conclude the agency has provided a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Id. at 842-43, 104 S.Ct. 2778. If the statutory language is clear, however, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress. Id. The BIA, through powers delegated by the Attorney General, enforces and interprets the INA and thus has the authority to fill statutory gaps with reasonable interpretations. See 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a). The government would stand on firm Chevron ground, then, if it could point to an ambiguity in § 212(c). But the government has failed to suggest one. Perhaps this is because the language of § 212(c) lacks ambiguity, as the Attorney General may not exercise his discretion to grant a waiver to lawful permanent residents who are under an order of deportation. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c) (repealed 1996). Petitioners, as deportees, clearly fall outside the statute's reach. 49 Any difficulty in determining § 212(c)'s applicability to deportees arises not from the statutory language but from the BIA's gloss on Francis. Most, if not all, administrative rules grow out of an agency's expertise and experience in its particular realm of delegated lawmaking. The statutory counterpart rule is different. It is a creature of constitutional avoidance, arising from the ramifications of a prior constitutional decision of this court, rather than the original statute concerning whose interpretation the Attorney General has conceded expertise. Bedoya-Valencia, 6 F.3d at 898. 50 Courts interpret statutes to avoid constitutional infirmities, recogniz[ing] that Congress, like [the Supreme] Court, is bound by and swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. We will therefore not lightly assume that Congress intended to infringe constitutionally protected liberties or usurp power constitutionally forbidden it. Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Bldg. & Const. Trades Council, et al., 485 U.S. 568, 575, 108 S.Ct. 1392, 99 L.Ed.2d 645 (1988). We construed § 212(c) to avoid its unconstitutional application in Francis. That choice having been made long ago, the obligation to properly implement the decision rests squarely on us. Were we to do otherwise — defer to an agency's determination of equal protection — we would abdicate our dual responsibilities to uphold the Constitution and to ensure the executive and legislative branches' compliance therewith. We therefore reject the government's request for deference. 9 51 Because these petitions turn on the guarantee of equal protection, any decision regarding deportees' eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver must begin with our precedent. Francis held that lawful permanent residents are not provided equal treatment when their eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver of removal turns on an irrational classification — whether they traveled abroad recently. 532 F.2d at 273. In the thirty-plus years since, we have offered precious little guidance on how to carry out that mandate. Our holding in Bedoya-Valencia sheds no light on the matter, for that case involved a deportee whose ground of deportation was entry without inspection. 6 F.3d at 894. Only a deportee can be forced to leave the country for such an act. Excludees, by definition, are prevented from entry and thus cannot enter without inspection. We allowed a deportee who entered without inspection to request a § 212(c) waiver to promote coherence and consistency within the immigration laws and not as a matter of equal protection. Id. at 898. Similarly, Cato involved a deportee convicted of a firearms offense, who chose not to claim that his ground of deportation . . . is substantially equivalent to a ground of exclusion, but instead tried to squeeze himself into the holding of Bedoya-Valencia. Id. at 601. We demurred. Excludees and deportees are equally capable of committing a firearm offense, rendering the deportee in Cato ineligible for a § 212(c) waiver under Bedoya-Valencia. See Cato 84 F.3d at 600. Neither Bedoya-Valencia nor Cato circumscribed or altered Francis 's holding to the extent that lawful permanent residents should receive similar treatment under § 212(c) regardless of whether they are in deportation or exclusion proceedings. Accordingly, neither decision resolves the question before us — whether the irrelevant and fortuitous circumstance of not leaving the country stands in the way of petitioners' eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver. Francis, 532 F.2d at 273. 52 B. The Petitioners' Aggravated Felony Ground of Deportation As Having a Counterpart Ground of Exclusion 53 The BIA's search for substantially similar language in grounds of deportation and grounds of exclusion led it to conclude that petitioners were ineligible for a § 212(c) waiver. Petitioner Blake, for instance, pleaded guilty to first degree sexual abuse of a minor. Even though an excludee with a first degree sexual abuse of a minor conviction might be eligible for a § 212(c) waiver, the BIA held Blake was not. Blake, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 729. The BIA found determinative the lack of similar language used to describe Blake's particular class of aggravated felony, murder, rape, or sexual abuse of minor, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(A), and the ground of exclusion for crimes involving moral turpitude, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). Similarly, Foster, who pleaded guilty to first degree manslaughter, could not satisfy the BIA's test because a crime of violence, id. § 1101(a)(43)(F), was not phrased similarly to crimes involving moral turpitude, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). The government justifies this result in terms of congressional intent: Although Congress could have included murder offenses as grounds of inadmissibility, it has not. The BIA takes a slightly different approach: Although there need not be perfect symmetry in order to find that a ground of removal has a statutory counterpart in § 212(a), there must be a closer match than that exhibited by [an] incidental overlap between allegedly comparable grounds of deportation and grounds of exclusion. Brieva-Perez, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 773. 54 The BIA's emphasis on similar language is strange. Congress designed § 212(c) to waive grounds of exclusion, not deportation. It never contemplated that its grounds of deportation would have any connection with the grounds of exclusion. By now it should be clear that the history of § 212(c) relief for deportees began not with an expression of congressional intent but rather with Francis, 532 F.2d 268. Our holding in Francis was compelled by the Constitution. It was neither what Congress wrote nor what Congress intended. Put simply, Congress did not employ similar terms when writing the grounds of exclusion and grounds of deportation because it had no need to, making it an exercise in futility to search for similar language to gauge whether equal protection is being afforded. 55 Equally problematic is the BIA's concern about a so-called incidental overlap between grounds of deportation and grounds of exclusion. Brieva-Perez, 23 I. & N. Dec. at 773. Some grounds of exclusion have been written broadly, encompassing more offenses than similar grounds of deportation, and vice versa. This can, and should, raise a red flag that some lawful permanent residents under a particular ground of deportation may not be eligible for a § 212(c) waiver. But an incidental overlap cannot decide every case. 10 If it did, eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver would be decided by the entire universe of offenses that might fall under the same ground of deportation. However, holding as much — that all or substantially all of the offenses under a particular ground of deportation must also fall under the counterpart ground of exclusion — finds no support in our precedent. The touchstone in Francis was the irrelevant and fortuitous circumstance of traveling abroad recently, 532 F.2d at 273; the decision did not consider whether equal protection requires that all or even most offenses falling under a particular ground of deportation must also fall under the counterpart ground of exclusion. In short, eligibility for relief in Francis turned on whether the lawful permanent resident's offense could trigger § 212(c) were he in exclusion proceedings, not how his offense was categorized as a ground of deportation. 56 In contrast to the government's narrow view of the equal protection principle articulated in Francis, petitioners urge us to broadly rule that their aggravated felony ground of deportation is equivalent to the ground of exclusion for crimes involving moral turpitude. If correct, each petitioner, having committed an offense classified as an aggravated felony, would have a comparable ground of exclusion and thus be eligible for a § 212(c) waiver. Petitioners' argument may be unpacked as a simple syllogism. An aggravated felony conviction requires an act of moral turpitude; petitioners have committed aggravated felonies; therefore, their aggravated felonies are acts of moral turpitude. But their syllogism fails; its first premise is false. 57 An aggravated felony need not be a crime involving moral turpitude. A crime involving moral turpitude similarly need not be an aggravated felony. Neither the severity, nor the seriousness, nor even its classification as a felony, will determine whether an offense is a crime involving moral turpitude. Moral turpitude instead inures in those acts that are inherently base, vile, or depraved. Gill v. INS, 420 F.3d 82, 89 (2d Cir.2005) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). These acts are considered malum in se: that is, the acts are criminal because their nature is morally reprehensible and are not criminal simply by reason of statutory prohibition. See Rodriguez v. Gonzales, 451 F.3d 60, 63 (2d Cir.2006). While a number of aggravated felonies require intentional conduct, not all are inherently base and vile. Two or more gambling offenses, for instance, may render a lawful permanent resident deportable for having committed an aggravated felony, see 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(J), but the BIA has held that gambling is not a crime involving moral turpitude, see In the Matter of G-, 1 I. & N. Dec. 59 (B.I.A.1941). Crimes involving moral turpitude and aggravated felonies are two broad classes of criminal conduct. Were we to conclude that such breadth signaled congruency, we would be extending the scope of § 212(c) to a potentially different, and perhaps much larger, class of persons than necessary under Francis. 58 Rather than adopt this overly broad approach, petitioners' eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver must turn on their particular criminal offenses. If the offense that renders a lawful permanent resident deportable would render a similarly situated lawful permanent resident excludable, the deportable lawful permanent resident is eligible for a waiver of deportation. As the Attorney General observed: [T]he guarantee of equal protection requires, at most, that an alien subject to deportation must have the same opportunity to seek discretionary relief as an alien who has temporarily left this country and, upon reentry, been subject to exclusion. Matter of Hernandez-Casillas, 20 I. & N. Dec. 262, 287 (B.I.A.1990; A.G.1991). These sentiments were echoed by the BIA: It would indeed be remarkable if a § 212(c) waiver were available to an alien in deportation proceedings when that same alien would not have occasion to seek such relief were he in exclusion proceedings instead. Jimenez-Santillano, 21 I. & N. Dec. at 575. The same principle finds support in our earlier decisions: While § 212(c), on its face, applies only to excludees, and not to deportees . . ., we held in Francis . . ., that, for equal protection reasons, § 212(c)'s privilege of discretionary waiver for aliens in exclusion proceedings should also be extended to similarly situated aliens in deportation proceedings. Cato, 84 F.3d at 599. 59 We recognize our holding is at odds with that reached by several other circuits. The Third Circuit has found that a deportee's underlying crime plays no role in determining eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver, concluding that [i]t is therefore irrelevant that [a deportee's] conviction for attempted murder could have subjected him to removal as an alien convicted of a crime of moral turpitude . . . . Caroleo v. Gonzales, 476 F.3d 158, 168 (3d Cir.2007). The First Circuit came to a similar conclusion: `[A]ggravated felony' and `crime of violence,' although statutory grounds for deportation under specified conditions, were not themselves statutory grounds for exclusion; therefore the exclusion statute does not provide authority for waivers corresponding to those grounds. Kim v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 58, 62 (1st Cir.2006) (emphasis in original). So has the Fifth Circuit. See Dung Tri Vo v. Gonzales, 482 F.3d 363 (5th Cir.2007); Sanchez v. Gonzales, 473 F.3d 133 (5th Cir.2006). These decisions appear to rest on Komarenko v. INS, 35 F.3d 432 (9th Cir.1994), where the Ninth Circuit declined to adopt a case-by-case approach in determining whether equal protection would be violated when an alien convicted of assault with a deadly weapon was held ineligible for § 212(c) relief. The court instead compared the language of the statutory ground of deportation with the language of the statutory ground of exclusion. After comparison convinced the Komarenko court of an insufficient similarity in language, the court rejected the alien's argument that equal protection required a § 212(c) waiver be available to lawful permanent residents under that particular statutory ground of deportation. 60 We cannot follow the lead of the Ninth Circuit and the other courts that have considered the issue because we are bound by Francis 's mandate to ensure that permanent residents who are in like circumstances, but for irrelevant and fortuitous factors, be treated in a like manner. 532 F.2d at 273. Were we to approve of these other courts' formulaic approach — limiting ourselves only to the language in the relevant grounds of deportation and exclusion — we would be ignoring our precedent that requires us to examine the circumstances of the deportable alien, rather than the language Congress used to classify his or her status. That is, what makes one alien similarly situated to another is his or her act or offense, which is captured in the INA as either a ground of deportation or ground of exclusion. See Cato, 84 F.3d at 599; Bedoya-Valencia, 6 F.3d at 895. Therefore, each petitioner, a deportable lawful permanent resident with an aggravated felony conviction, is eligible for a § 212(c) waiver if his or her particular aggravated felony offense could form the basis of exclusion under § 212(a) as a crime of moral turpitude. 61 Not only is this holding consistent with Francis, it is consistent with the Attorney General's discretionary power, which is limited to the grounds of exclusion listed in § 212(a). Indeed, this approach appears to be one with which the BIA has much experience, having performed a similar analysis in a number of deportees' § 212(c) waiver requests. See, e.g., In re Brieva-Perez, 23 I. & N. Dec. 766; Matter of Meza, 20 I. & N. Dec. 257. The limits of our ruling similarly should be apparent. Unlike Bedoya-Valencia, 6 F.3d 891, the Attorney General's discretion has not been extended beyond the statutory grounds of exclusion. We have neither made a § 212(c) waiver available to all deportees with an aggravated felony conviction, nor put deportees in a better position than excludees. Our decision is simply confined to the equal protection principle articulated in Francis: if petitioners' underlying aggravated felony offenses could form the basis of a ground of exclusion, they will be eligible for a § 212(c) waiver. This task — determining whether a particular aggravated felony could be considered a crime of moral turpitude — is one well within the BIA's expertise. See Gill, 420 F.3d at 89. Accordingly, prudence dictates that the BIA have the opportunity to consider whether petitioners' individual aggravated felonies could form the basis for exclusion in the first instance.