On the removal defense litigation front, IDP is using the momentum from recent Supreme Court victories in Moncrieffe and Descamps to support efforts to roll back overreaching court interpretations of the deportation laws.
Together with the Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and other allies, last month IDP filed an amici brief in Carrasco-Chavez v. Holder, urging the Fourth Circuit to abandon its misguided rule that prevents some immigrants from seeking relief from removal even when court records do not clearly show that a criminal bar to relief applies.
IDP is also supporting a similar effort in the Ninth Circuit.
Also in August, IDP, joined by all of New York City’s providers of indigent defense and with pro bono representation by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, filed an amici brief in Pascual v. Holder asking the Second Circuit to reconsider its ruling that certain New York drug “sale” offenses are “aggravated felonies” even though, under New York’s expansive definition of what it means to “sell,” these laws punish minimal conduct that should not be deemed felonies under federal law. (For an earlier more comprehensive brief submitted in this case by Gibson Dunn on behalf of the same amici, click here).
And beginning the fall on a high note, IDP helped to bring about an important victory in the Third Circuit, which ruled last week in Castillo v. Attorney General that immigration authorities acted arbitrarily in treating New Jersey’s non-criminal “disorderly persons” offenses as “crimes” triggering deportation. Thanking IDP for the assistance and advice it has provided in this case over the last two years, Francis Geier, one of Mr. Castillo’s attorneys, wrote: “I couldn’t have won the case without you!”