Draft:Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 543 U.S. 335 (2005) was a Supreme Court case that ruled that federal law allows deportees from the U.S. to be deported to another country without the receiving country’s prior consent. The case was argued on October 15, 2004, and decided on January 12, 2005. The main question of the case was whether individuals could be deported to countries with no functioning government that could accept their return.

Background

Procedures for deportation have changed over time, and whether receiving countries have to advance consent has been debated in the courts many times. The Immigration Act of 1917 set detailed reasons for deportation and the process for removing people deemed deportable. After this Act was signed into law, multiple court cases interpreted the policy to specify the process for deportation. In Hajdamacha v. Karnuth and United States ex rel. Hudak v. Uhl, the courts ruled that receiving countries had the right to refuse deportees. Both of these cases suggest that countries are required to accept individuals before they are deported.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 broadened the policies concerning deportation by giving a wider range of deportation locations and giving more authority to deported individuals to choose a country to receive them. In United States ex rel. Tom Man v. Murff, the court ruled that people cannot be deported to countries that refuse to accept them. However, the Board of Immigration Appeals interpreted the policy as not requiring acceptance by the destination country.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 set up the policy that is currently used for deportation, and the one debated in Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The act set up a three-step process to determine where an individual will be deported. The first step allows the deportee to select a country of removal. If the deportee cannot be sent to the country they selected, the second step enables the Attorney General to send the deportee to a country where they are a subject or citizen. Finally, if neither of the first two steps is successful, the Attorney General has seven possible options in step three of the removal process. The deportee can be removed to (1) the country from which they were admitted to the U.S., (2) the country where there is a foreign port from which they left to the U.S., (3) the country where they resided before entering the U.S., (4) the country where they were born, (5) the country that had sovereignty over the birthplace when they were born, (6) the country where the birthplace is located when they are removed, or (7) another country whose government will accept the deportee. Jama used the seventh clause as the basis of the defense argument. Specifically, his defense argued that the word “another” in the final clause makes the acceptance requirement applicable to all of the previous clauses.

Case

Keyse G. Jama was a Somali refugee in the U.S. but had his refugee status rescinded in 2000 because of a criminal conviction. Jama refused to designate a country to which he would be removed, so the Attorney General designated that he be moved to Somalia, his country of birth. Jama filed a habeas petition stating that Somalia did not have a functioning government that could consent to his removal. Therefore, the U.S. could not send him to Somalia without their approval. The District Court for the District of Minnesota agreed with Jama., but the federal government appealed the ruling. The Eighth Circuit Court reversed the decision, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Decision

Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court. The majority opinion was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who was joined by Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, William Rehnquist, and Clarence Thomas. They held that the acceptance requirement only appears in the final clause of the final step of the deportation process set forth in 8 USCS § 1231(b) and does not apply to the previous clauses. Additionally, while the final clause states “another country whose government will accept the alien,” Scalia wrote that “another” does not mean the acceptance applies to the previous clauses. His rejection of this argument is by reason of the grammatical rule of the last antecedent.

The dissenting opinion was written by Justice David Souter, who was joined by John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. The dissent held that the acceptance requirement in the final clause applies to all seven clauses because of the word “another” in the final clause. Their dissent showed agreement with the arguments put forward by Jama’s defense.

Significance

The Jama decision had an immediate impact on deportations, especially for Somali people. Previously, deportations to Somalia had been halted because of the country’s lack of a centralized government and humanitarian concerns, but the Jama decision took away their defense for delaying their removal. Additionally, the decision set a new precedent that people could be deported to their country of origin, regardless of the country's political conditions.

Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement overturned Ali v. Ashcroft (2003), a class action lawsuit in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that acceptance was required for all deportation removals. This case involved 4,000 Somali refugees, all of whom could face deportation back to Somalia after the Jama decision.