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Home – Political News – An Immigration Ruling With Teeth—If It Holds Up

An Immigration Ruling With Teeth—If It Holds Up

Sometimes a consequential immigration decision turns not on a new act of Congress or a ruling by the Supreme Court, but on whether an agency finally gives existing statutory language its full effect. That is the promise of Matter of A-V-O-, a Sept. 17 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals. The board concluded that an aggravated felony conviction can do more than make an alien removable: It can also make that person inadmissible as an immigrant because the conviction permanently forecloses citizenship.

That could prove quite helpful to the Department of Homeland Security. But promising precedent is not the same thing as a settled enforcement policy, much less a final judicial victory. How DHS uses this decision in charging cases—and whether the federal courts of appeals sustain it—will determine whether its promise becomes practice.

The underlying facts are common and hardly a model of respect for American law. The respondent, a Nicaraguan citizen, entered the United States on a visitor visa in 1996 and overstayed. She was ordered removed in absentia in 2004, but later successfully reopened her immigration proceedings in 2019. In 2020, she was convicted in federal court of using an unauthorized access device and aggravated identity theft, receiving prison sentences of eight months and 24 months, respectively.

She disputed whether her crimes crossed the statutory threshold for an “aggravated felony” involving fraud or deceit: losses exceeding $10,000. Her argument concentrated on the fact that she spent $3,450.42 to purchase five cellular phones. But the government identified total losses of $345,100.14, and the trial judge ordered restitution in that amount, jointly and severally with her co-defendants.

The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected her attempt to make the one transaction stand for the whole offense. Applying the Supreme........

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