Court Opinion

ID: 9806212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 18:49:35.239779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:02:41.150639
License: Public Domain

OWENS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in Judge Graber’s thoughtful opinion. I write separately to emphasize that the United States Department of Justice’s position in this and other immigration cases clashes with its own campaign against foreign corruption.
The Justice Department does not limit corruption to “bribery.” Rather, it correctly defines corruption as the “abuse of entrusted power for personal gain.” Shortly after the Arab Spring, former Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer recounted the tragic story of Mohammed Bouazizi, who lit himself on fire in Tunisia after suffering the abuse of a corrupt local official.
Bouazizi faced corruption at the most personal level. His fruit stand and electronic scale were arbitrarily taken from him by a municipal inspector, who also humiliated him with a slap across the face, and authorities refused to give him back his property.1
Bouazizi’s tale is unfortunately a .global one, shared by Khudaverdyan and many others. A guard who demands sexual favors from a prisoner is corrupt.2 So is a police officer who brutalizes a local com*1110munity.3 And so is a police chief who, to impress his “ladies and friends,” uses his bodyguards to beat up a restaurant manager who refuses to kowtow to his demands. None of these violations feature bribes, but all involve the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain, which can be as petty as trying to look like a big shot in front of friends and members of the opposite sex. As Judge Graber’s opinion ably demonstrates, this court has acknowledged that this abuse, not the exchange of money, is the essence of corruption. And I read our immigration laws as protecting (rather than deporting) those who protest (or are perceived as protesting) corrupt government officials. It is unclear why the Justice Department champions the fight against foreign corruption while it simultaneously tries to deport those perceived as fighting foreign corruption. As Cinna the Poet learned in Julius Caesar, it matters more that the State thinks one is an enemy than being an enemy of the State. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar act 3, sc. 3.

. Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Att’y Gen., Address at the 26th National Conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Nov. 8, 2011) (transcript available at http://www.justice.gov/ criminal/pr/speeches/2011/crm-speechl 11108. html).

. See, e.g., Office of the Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep't of Justice, The Department of Justice’s Efforts to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Federal Inmates 3 (2009) (describing the investigation of "a ring of correctional officers [who] provided contraband to prisoners in return for sexual favors” and “intimidated prisoners to keep them from cooperating with investigators once the corruption was discovered”), available at http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/ plus/e0904.pdf; Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Attorney General Honors Medal of Valor Recipients (Oct. 22, 2008) (honoring agent for investigating "corrupt prison guards in a federal prison facility” who, among other things, "sexually abus[ed] female inmates”), available at http://ojp.gov/newsroom/ pressreleases/2008/oaag09004.htm.

. See, e.g., Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Civilian Pleads Guilty to Conspiring with Corrupt Police Officers in July 2012 Robbery in Bayamon, Puerto Rico (Nov. 7, 2014) (announcing guilty plea of civilian who joined with “corrupt police officers” to rob a house of money and cocaine while "falsely claiming] they were executing a search warrant”), available at. http://www.justice.gov/ opa/pr/civilian-pleads-guilty-conspiring-corrupt-p olice-officers-july-2012-robbeiybay-amon-puerto; Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Five New Orleans Police Officers Sentenced on Civil Rights and Obstruction of Justice Violations in the Danziger Bridge Shooting Case (Apr. 4, 2012) (announcing sentencing of "corrupt police officers” who "shot innocent people” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina "and then went to great lengths to cover up their own crimes”), available at http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/five-new-orleans-police-officers-sentenced-civilrights- and-obstructionjustice-violations.