Supreme Court Issues 2 Pro-Immigrant Decisions
The Supreme Court last week ruled in a 7-2 decision that Courts of Appeal should apply traditional rules governing Stays of Removal, rather than having to show that execution of the removal order would be "prohibited as a matter of law." Chief Justice Roberts wrote the decision, acknowledging that "appeals take time" and the prohibition on "enjoining" the execution of a removal order does not cover a temporary stay of removal pending the resolution of appellate review. If Congress wanted to prevent "stays" it would have used to word "stay" rather than "enjoin." The case is Nken v. Holder (08-681). Attorney Jeremy McKinney assisted in the editing of an Amicus ("Friend of the Court") Brief filed on the Nken case.
In the 2nd immigration-related case, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that our federal identity theft statute (18 USC § 1028(a)(1)) requires the Government to show that the defendant knew that the means of identification at issue belonged toanother person. As a matter of ordinary English grammar, "knowingly" is naturally read as applying to all the subsequently listedelements of the crime. The Government had been making the argument that a person is guilty so long as the person knowingly possessed the identification, regardless of whether the person actually knew it was another's identification. This faulty interpretation led to many foreign national spending two years more in jail for possessing Social Security cards that thought contained a made-up Social Security number. To gain the additional jail time, the Government will now have to show the perpetrator knew they were stealing another person's identity. The case is Flores-Figueroa v. USA (08-108).
