That state statute prohibits the possession or use of drug paraphernalia to “store, contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale or otherwise introduce a controlled substance into the human body.” Kan. Stat. Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined. store [or] conceal . [are resolved by] immigration judges and front-line immigration officers, often years after the convictions.” Koh, The Whole Better than the Sum: A Case for the Categorical Approach to Determining the Immigration Consequences of Crime, 26 Geo.

Because the statute renders an alien removable whenever he is convicted of violating a law “relating to” a federally controlled substance, I would affirm. The paraphernalia Mellouli was charged with possessing was a sock in which he had placed four tablets of a drug. * Enter a valid Journal (must The structure of the removal statute confirms this interpretation. Whether Ferreiraapplied that framework correctly is not a matter this case calls upon us to decide.

The sole “paraphernalia” Mellouli was charged with possessing was a sock in which he had placed four unidentified orange tablets. 257, 295 (2012). The BIA has long applied the categorical approach to assess whether a state drug conviction trig gers removal under successive versions of what is now §1227(a)(2)(B)(i). It qualified “relating to a controlled substance” by adding the limitation “as defined in [§ 802].” If those words do not confine § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i)'s application to drugs defined in § 802, one can only wonder why Congress put them there. Whether Ferreira applied that framework correctly is not a matter this case calls upon us to decide. briefs keyed to 223 law school casebooks. .

In order to have the full site experience, keep cookies enabled on your web browser. . § 802 . Das, The Immigration Penalties of Criminal Convictions: Resurrecting Categorical Analysis in Immigration Law, 86 N. Y. U. L. Rev. It is likewise beside the point that the pills were, in fact, federally controlled substances, that Mellouli concealed them in his sock while being booked into jail, that he was being booked into jail for his second arrest for driving under the influence in less than one year, that he pleaded to the paraphernalia offense after initially being charged with trafficking contraband in jail, or that he has since been charged with resisting arrest and failure to display a valid driver's license upon demand.

Instead, to trigger removal under § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i), the Government must connect an element of the alien's conviction to a drug “defined in [§ 802].”. For unless the Court ultimately adopts the modified categorical approach for statutes, like the one at issue here, that define offenses with reference to “controlled substances” generally, and treats them as divisible by each separately listed substance, ante, at 1986, n. 4, its interpretation would mean that no conviction under a controlled-substances regime more expansive than the Federal Government's would trigger removal.Thus, whenever a State moves first in subjecting some newly discovered drug to regulation, every alien convicted during the lag between state and federal regulation would be immunized from the immigration consequences of his conduct. Ibid. Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Alito joined. Mellouli, a citizen of Tunisia, entered the United States on a student visa in 2004. any law or regulation relating to the illicit possession of or traffic in narcotic drugs or mari-  huana.” Id., at 275. To answer that question by assuming the answer is circular. In such cases, “a court may determine which particular offense the noncitizen was convicted of by examining the charging document and jury instructions, or in the case of a guilty plea, the plea agreement, plea colloquy, or some comparable judicial record of the factual basis for the plea.” Ibid. Adderall, the brand name of an amphetamine-based drug typically prescribed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,2 is a controlled substance under both federal and Kansas law. Brief for Respondent 10 (explaining that two of the nine nonfederally controlled substances on Kansas’ schedules at the time Mellouli was arrested became federally controlled within a year of his arrest).

The BIA concluded that an alien’s California conviction for offering to sell an unidentified “narcotic” was not a deportable offense, for it was possible that the conviction involved a substance, such as peyote, controlled only under California law.

Even assuming “regulating only” were a permissibleinterpretation of “relating to”—for it certainly is not the most natural one—that interpretation would be foreclosed by Congress' pointed word choice in the surrounding provisions. Either way, that is not how we should go about interpreting statutes, and I respectfully dissent.

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Mellouli was deported under a provision of Federal Immigration Law that authorizes deportation of an alien convicted of a violation of any law or regulation of a state, the United States, or a foreign country relating to a controlled substance as defined in Section 802 of Title 21. .