INS v. St. Cyr, Enrico
INS v. St. Cyr, Enrico
INS v. St. Cyr, Enrico
By: Reggie Beehner & Lynn Corney, Medill News ServiceQuestions presented
(1) Did the district court have habeas corpus jurisdiction over St. Cyr's challenge to his final deportation order? (2) Did the Board of Immigration Appeals properly conclude that St. Cyr is not eligible to have his deportation order reviewed for discretionary relief because new immigration laws barred such a review even though the laws were enacted after St. Cyr's conviction?
Brief
On March 8, 1996, Enrico St. Cyr pleaded guilty to a charge of drug trafficking. Because St. Cyr was not a citizen of the United States, but an alien, his offense -- an aggravated felony -- was punishable by more than just a prison sentence. He was also to be deported.
But St. Cyr still had reason to be optimistic. The Board of Immigration Appeals allowed for aliens to appeal their removal order. If he could demonstrate that his deportation would cause extraordinary hardship to his family in the United States, St. Cyr could have his removal waived by an immigration judge. Deportation waivers were not rare at the time. In fact, more than half of the deportation appeals heard by immigration judges were granted.
St. Cyr, a native of Haiti, was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident on June 17, 1986. His family lives in the U.S. - his parents and sister as citizens and his brother as a lawful permanent resident.
St. Cyr's hopes for relief, however, were soon dashed. In the months following his guilty plea and conviction, Congress amended the Immigration Nationality Act through two new statutes - the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. The new statutes were designed to enhance the ability of the U.S. to deport criminal aliens, denying judicial review of orders of deportation for certain classes of aliens, specifically, those with convictions of drug-related crime, one or more aggravated felonies, or two or more offenses involving moral turpitude.
For St. Cyr, the changes eliminated his chances for appeal.
Aliens whose removal proceedings were already under way by the time the statutes were enacted were not subject to the new laws. But for those aliens whose removal appeals had not yet begun, the statutes denied their entitlement to any court review. They would be deported.
St. Cyr fell into the latter category. His removal proceedings began on April 10, 1997 - a full six months after the laws were enacted. And on Jan. 12, 1998, an immigration judge ruled that St. Cyr was to be deported. When St. Cyr tried to appeal his removal order to the Board of Immigration Appeals on Nov. 10, 1998, he was deemed ineligible to apply for an appeal under the new laws and his petition was dismissed.
On April 27, 1999, St. Cyr filed a habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut challenging the validity of his deportation. He argued that the laws should not be applied retroactively to bar his eligibility for deportation relief because his criminal conduct and conviction occurred prior to the laws. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service argued that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear St. Cyr's case and that the law clearly stated that St. Cyr was ineligible for relief.
On Aug. 23, 1999, the district court rejected the INS's argument, ruling that the new statutes did not expressly deny the district court its habeas jurisdiction over final removal orders, and finding for St. Cyr that his removal proceedings should be governed by the laws that were in effect at the time he committed the crime. Congress had not intended for the laws to be applied retroactively, the court reasoned, because it would have unfairly attached new legal consequences to criminal conduct that had already occurred.
The INS appealed, arguing that the district court did not hold jurisdiction over the case. The INS also submitted that St. Cyr was statutorily ineligible to apply for relief, regardless of the time of his crime and conviction. Congress, the INS argued, provided specific "statutory guidance" that reserved the right to apply for a waiver only to those aliens whose removal proceedings commenced prior to the laws' enactment.
On Sept. 1, 2000, a divided 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed. First, the majority ruled that the district court held habeas jurisdiction in St. Cyr's petition because, while the court's jurisdiction is limited in many cases, this case raised pure questions of law. Also, St. Cyr had no other avenues available to him for his petition to receive judicial review.
Second, in ruling on the legal challenges in the case, the court turned to previous Supreme Court cases, specifically its 1994 opinion in Landgraf v USI Film Products, which provided a "framework" for determining whether a law should be retroactively applied to conduct occurring prior to the law's enactment.
Two questions guided the analysis: Did Congress explicitly prescribe whether the statute could be applied to conduct occurring prior to enactment? And if not, would the statute, if applied retroactively, unfairly infringe on a person's rights, increase liability for past conduct or impose new duties to transactions already completed?
On the first question, the court determined that the language in the statute was ambiguous. The court held that a "heightened level of clarity" was required to justify a statute's retroactive application. And if the language was unclear, as in this case, the court ruled the "longstanding assumption is against, not in favor of," retroactive application.
Turning to the second question, whether the provision would attach new "legal consequences," the court's opinion adhered to rulings of other circuit courts in similar cases. The court held that the statutes would have an "impermissible retroactive effect" when applied to a guilty plea rather than a court conviction. The court reasoned that St. Cyr, in the face of charges that would render him removable from the U.S., could have plead guilty to a crime because of the possibility of receiving a lighter sentence and thus retaining his eligibility to apply for relief from removal. But under the effect of the new laws, this "settled expectation is upset dramatically," effectively denying St. Cyr a form of relief previously available. Thus, the court held, the statutes attached new legal consequences to St. Cyr's guilty plea.
Judge John M. Walker Jr. dissented from the unsigned opinion of the court, however, hewing with the INS's argument that the language of the statute was clear - any alien whose removal proceedings had not commenced by the set date would not be eligible for relief. If Congress's intent is "clear on its face," Walker argued, there was no reason to reach the second step of the Landgraf analysis, determining whether the statutes had a retroactive effect. But even if this second step were taken, he continued, the statutes still would not attach new legal consequences because St. Cyr, by virtue of his conviction, was subject to deportation from the outset.
On Jan. 12, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case, and in Calcano-Martinez v. INS, another immigration case decided on Sept. 1, 2000 by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Calcano-Martinez is docketed as 00-1011.
On June 25, 2001, the Court held 5-4 that the government could not deny court hearings to immigrants who pleaded guilty to crimes before the enactment of the 1996 provisions in the federal immigration law.
Barring courts from reviewing claims of resident immigrants like St. Cyr would raise "substantial constitutional questions," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Also Stevens said, Congress did not make its intent clear in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act to strip courts of its traditional habeas jurisdiction that dates all the way back to 1789 when the Constitution was ratified, with the following Suspension Clause in Article I, "9: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
"In England prior to 1789, in the Colonies, and in this Nation during the formative years of our Government, the writ of habeas corpus was available to nonenemy aliens as well as to citizens. It enabled them to challenge executive and private detention in civil cases as well as criminal," Stevens elaborated. "Moreover, the issuance of the writ was not limited to challenges to the jurisdiction of the custodian, but encompassed detentions based on errors of law, including the erroneous application or interpretation of statutes. It was used to command the discharge of seamen who had a statutory exemption from impressment into the British Navy, to emancipate slaves, and to obtain the freedom of apprentices and asylum inmates. Most important, for our purposes, those early cases contain no suggestion that habeas relief in cases involving executive detention was only available for constitutional error."
The majority concluded that "a serious Suspension Clause issue would be presented if we were to accept the INS' submission that the 1996 statutes have withdrawn that power from federal judges and provided no adequate substitute for its exercise?The necessity of resolving such a serious and difficult constitutional issue-and the desirability of avoiding that necessity-simply reinforce the reasons for requiring a clear and unambiguous statement of constitutional intent. "
Joining Stevens were Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Congress could not have been clearer in expressing its intent to strip the courts of jurisdiction in the deportation of resident aliens convicted of aggravated felonies, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in dissent for himself, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor.
"The Court today finds ambiguity in the utterly clear language of a statute that forbids the district court (and all other courts) to entertain the claims of aliens such as respondent St. Cyr, who have been found deportable by reason of their criminal acts. It fabricates a superclear statement, 'magic words' requirement for the congressional expression of such an intent, unjustified in law and unparalleled in any other area of our jurisprudence," wrote Scalia. "And as the fruit of its labors, it brings forth a version of the statute that affords criminal aliens more opportunities for delay-inducing judicial review than are afforded to non-criminal aliens."
As to whether Congress's clear intention violates the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, Scalia wrote that the clause is not applicable here because resident aliens facing deportation never had a habeas right that was suspended.
But taking away the rights of court review from immigrants facing deportation "has an obnoxious and severe retroactive effect," Stevens said. Non-citizens like St. Cyr "almost certainly relied" on their right to a hearing before deciding to plead guilty, he added.
The Court's opinion in St. Cyr was issued the same day as its companion opinion in Calcano-Martinez v. INS. In that case, the Court also divided 5-4. In Justice Stevens' brief majority opinion, he concluded that although Calcano-Martinez and other resident aliens were not entitled to direct review by the federal courts, they were entitled to habeas relief, along the lines set out in the St. Cyr opinion.
Lawyers for St. Cyr and Calcano-Martinez lauded the Supreme Court's decision.
"It is a ringing endorsement of the rights of legal residents to be treated fairly based on the law in effect when they make their decisions. It's a ringing endorsement of the power of the courts to supervise the INS and make sure that the INS isn't getting the law wrong," said Nancy Morawetz, a New York University law professor who helped write the brief on behalf of St. Cyr and Calcano-Martinez.
On Aug. 6, 2001, about six weeks after the Court's opinion was issued, the Immigration and Naturalization Service announced it was releasing 359 foreign nationals with criminal records to comply with the Court's ruling.
Those released were not considered dangers to the community but were under strict conditions of supervision, INS officials said at the time.
The releases did not apply to Cuban convicts, according to a story in the Miami Herald. Most of those, about 1,700, were Cuban detainees who arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and later were convicted of aggravated felonies, the Herald reported.
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