Supreme Court strikes down section of immigration law

Trump choice Gorsuch sides with liberal justices

Washington — The Supreme Court said Tuesday that part of a federal law that makes it easier to deport immigrants who have been convicted of crimes is too vague to be enforced.

The court’s 5-4 decision — in an unusual alignment in which new Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices — concerns a catchall provision of immigration law that defines what makes a crime violent. Conviction for a crime of violence makes deportation “a virtual certainty” for an immigrant, no matter how long he has lived in the United States, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her opinion for the court.

The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump’s administration, which has emphasized stricter enforcement of immigration law. In this case, President Barack Obama’s administration took the same position in the Supreme Court in defense of the challenged provision. Trump tweeted Tuesday evening that the court’s decision “means that Congress must close loopholes that block the removal of dangerous criminal aliens, including aggravated felons.” He ended by saying “Keep America Safe!”

With the four other conservative justices in dissent, it was the vote of Trump-appointee Gorsuch that was decisive in striking down the provision at issue. Gorsuch did not join all of Kagan’s opinion, but he agreed with her that the law could not be left in place. Gorsuch wrote that “no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it.”

The case turned on a decision from 2015 that struck down a similarly worded part of another federal law that imposes longer prison sentences on repeat criminals.

Tuesday’s decision involves James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who came to the United States legally in 1992. After he pleaded no contest to two charges of burglary in California, the government began deportation proceedings. The government argued that he could be removed from the country because his convictions qualified as crimes of violence that allowed his removal under immigration law.