Supreme Court rules on immigrants in deportation relief case

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that federal appeals courts can review many rulings by immigration judges on whether deporting someone would, in the words of a federal statute, result in “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a family member lawfully in the United States.

The vote was 6-3, with the majority made up of an unusual coalition: the court’s three liberal members and the three justices appointed by President Donald J. Trump.

The case involved Situ Kamu Wilkinson, born in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2003, fleeing violence, he overstayed a tourist visa in the United States. About ten years later, he and his girlfriend had a son, a U.S. citizen identified in court documents as M.

After being detained by authorities in 2019, Mr. Wilkinson sought to avoid deportation under a provision of a federal statute that allows immigration judges to grant relief to people whose removal would cause great hardship to a spouse, parent or child. (Mr. Wilkinson met the law’s other criteria: having been present in the United States for at least 10 consecutive years, being of good moral character, and not having been convicted of certain crimes.)

An immigration judge ruled that M. had severe asthma and that Mr Wilkinson provided him with financial and emotional support. The judge also found that M. had been struggling with behavioral problems since Mr Wilkinson’s detention, when the boy was 7.

But the judge ruled that these circumstances did not amount to the kind of hardship that would justify an exception to the usual rules. The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed this ruling.

Mr. Wilkinson sought review before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which ruled that it had no jurisdiction under a 1996 law that stripped federal appeals courts of much of their jurisdiction over deportation rulings.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for five justices, said a change in the law allowed appeals courts to consider “questions of law.” She writes that the immigration judge’s application of the legal standard to the facts concerning M. met this requirement.

“Mixed questions of law and fact, even if primarily factual, fall within the statutory definition of ‘questions of law,’” Judge Sotomayor wrote, allowing appellate review.

Pure questions of fact are another matter, she wrote. “Thus,” she wrote, an immigration judge’s findings “regarding the credibility, severity of a family member’s medical condition, or the level of financial support currently provided by a noncitizen remain unreviewable. Only the question of whether those established facts meet the legal suitability standard is subject to judicial review.”

Justices Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Sotomayor in Wilkinson v. Garland, No. 22-666. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson voted with the majority, but did not adopt the reasoning.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said. that the majority had defied immigration laws by treating almost all questions as legal issues subject to review by appellate courts.

Such a reading of the immigration laws, he wrote, “would be the equivalent of a city council passing an ordinance banning all dogs from a park, except all dogs weighing less than 125 pounds.” Or the municipality adopts an ordinance that prohibits everyone from cycling without a helmet, but then adopts an exception for all persons under the age of 90.”