Two federal court cases: What kind of crime warrants deportation?

[alp227]

Immigrant crimes: Who deserves deportation?
Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, December 14, 2009

(12-14) 17:16 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Courts on two fronts looked for boundaries Monday on an important question of federal immigration law: What crimes are so serious that they require deportation for any noncitizen who commits them?

A federal appeals court ruled in a case from Solano County that statutory rape doesn't always require deportation. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether a legal immigrant in Texas must be deported because of a second misdemeanor conviction for drug possession.

Both cases involve a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that requires deportation of any immigrant, legal or illegal, who commits an "aggravated felony," a category of crimes that courts are still trying to define. It includes some drug and sex crimes that are misdemeanors - punishable by no more than a year in jail - rather than felonies.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/14/BAR71B46EV.DTL

The cases in question:
Supreme Court case Carachuri-Rosendo vs. Holder: Jose Carachuri-Rosendo came with his family from Mexico as a child and became a naturalized citizen in 1993. He pled guilty in 2004 to misdemeanor possession of marijuana and then in 2005 no contest to misdemeanor possession of Xanax without prescription. Carachuri is appealing a federal court decision to deport him based on a federal law that allows repeat drug offenders to be prosecuted as recidivists and thus felons, even though the repeated crime would normally be a misdemeanor.

The Solano County case (no name given) involves Mexican illegal immigrant Luis Pelayo-Garcia, who came to America in 1985 at age 17. A restaurant worker, he raised three young children after his wife left him. He took a female co-worker and her husband and daughter into his home. Pelayo dated and intended to marry the daughter, whom he thought was 18 but was really 15. Although immigration judges ruled that Pelayo's action was a felony and ordered him deported, the Nutty Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (in San Francisco, heh heh) overruled that. The court ruled 3-0 that California's statutory rape law doesn't require evidence of physical or psychological harm. The law in question prohibits anyone 21 or older from having sex with anyone 16 or younger. (So can Roman Polanski benefit from this ruling?)

[dkf]

1. A naturalized citizen can be deported?

I didn't realize that. I would have thought that if he was a citizen, he would be treated like any other citizen who had broken the law.

For an illegal immigrant, I would imagine that being caught period would result in deportation, regardless of any offense.

Guess that shows how much I know about the law.

[alp227]

2. Clarifications

Some cities, most prominently San Francisco, have "sanctuary city" policies that prevent city officials from notifying federal immigration authorities about illegal immigrants, unless said illegal immigrant committed a serious crime/felony like robbery, murder, anything that poses a threat to the community.

And since when have felon citizens lost their citizenship? Are naturalized citizens held to a different standard all of a sudden? We'll see what happens when the High Court issues its opinion.

[Angleae]

3. John Demjanjuk was a naturalized citizen.

And has been deported twice.