Court Opinion

ID: 9478421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:48:42.352726+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:25.395042
License: Public Domain

COFFIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join in the affirmance of the judgment below, essentially for the reasons expressed in Judge Pettine’s opinion at pages 367-368.
It is a very difficult question whether and when prior notice is required under section 1227(a). The arguments on each side have much to commend them, but I believe that we are hampered by a certain congressional schizophrenia. As Judge Pettine notes, there is much in the legislative history indicating that Congress had some intention of making the deportation and exclusion proceedings parallel, at least in part. I agree that it is sheer folly to send an alien to another country without any indication that the country will receive the alien, or, as in this case, where there is explicit notice that it will not accept the individual. On the other hand, Congress did not make the two statute sections parallel, and it would have been very easy to duplicate the precise notification procedures of § 1253(a) in the text of § 1227(a). The omission of this detail cannot, as Judge Aldrich points out, be wholly insignificant.
But it is not merely a confusing statute that bedevils us. We are also confronted by confusion on the facts, insofar as we do not know precisely how § 1227(a) is implemented by the INS. I can envision at least four different scenarios in a case like the present one: (1) The alien is sent unescorted on a plane to India, India “refuses” to accept the alien and sends him back immediately on a plane to the United States; (2) The alien is sent unescorted on a plane to India, where he is transferred against his will to Afghanistan; (3) The alien is escorted to India by an INS official, who brings the alien back to the United States if India refuses to accept him; (4) The alien is sent to India, either escorted or unaccompanied, and India accepts the alien, despite its previous denials.
None of these options seem particularly appealing or practicable, and the second is plainly unacceptable. The record does not indicate which of these procedures is commonly employed or guaranteed. It is clear that if the alien is unaccompanied on his flight to the foreign country, there is no assurance that he will not be shunted off to another country, rather than accepted in the first country or returned to the United States for implementation of the alternatives listed in § 1227(a)(2). It does not make much sense to assume that Congress left this possibility open; such a result effectively would eviscerate the 1981 amendments reflected in § 1227(a)(2). But the INS has given us no assurance that it can guarantee that the alternatives will remain viable after it sends an excluded alien off to a country that has expressed an unwillingness to accept that individual.
We do not, however, need to resolve this conundrum in the present case where the record is so barren. Given what we know about India’s posture toward these aliens, I believe that § 1253(h) prevents the deportation of these excludables back to India, for the reasons stated in Judge Pettine’s opinion supra at 367-368. These aliens withdrew their appeal of the AU’s denial of § 1253(h) relief only on the government’s representation that they would not be returned to Afghanistan. If we were to reverse the district court in this case, the INS could circumvent this promise by send*369ing the aliens to India despite India’s express intention not to accept them. Af-firmance here will mean that either the INS will follow the alternative procedures of § 1227(a)(2), or the aliens will be permitted to reinstate their appeal of the AU’s § 1253(h) decision. Therefore, I join in the judgment of affirmance, leaving for another day and a more illuminating record a decision concerning the precise scope of § 1227(a).