CONROY STEVE GORDON v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General
No. 19-1539
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
July 8, 2020
PUBLISHED. Argued: May 5, 2020. Before KING, KEENAN, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.
NATIONAL IMMIGRATION PROJECT OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD, Amicus Supporting Petitioner.
On Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals.
Petition for review granted, order of removal vacated, and remanded with directions by published opinion. Judge Keenan wrote the opinion, in which Judge King and Judge Rushing joined.
ARGUED: Samantha Shinsato Lee, WILEY REIN, LLP, Washington, D.C.; Jenny Kim, CAPITAL AREA IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS (CAIR) COALITION, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Sabatino Fioravante Leo, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. ON BRIEF: Adina Appelbaum, CAPITAL AREA IMMIGRANTS’ RIGHTS (CAIR) COALITION, Washington, D.C., for Petitioner. Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Anthony P. Nicastro, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. Khaled Alrabe, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION PROJECT OF THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD, Boston, Massachusetts, for Amicus Curiae.
In this case, we consider whether Conroy Gordon’s prior misdemeanor conviction under
Upon our review, we conclude that the government has failed to meet its burden of proving that Gordon is subject to removal. We hold that the plain language of
I.
Conroy Gordon, a citizen of Jamaica, was admitted to the Unitеd States in 1992, at the age of 23, as a lawful permanent resident. Gordon obtained permanent resident status under
If any person willfully discharges or causes to be discharged any firearm in any street in a city or town, or in any place of public business or place of public gathering, and such conduct results in bodily injury to another person, he shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony. If such conduct does not result in bodily injury to another person, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.1
(emphasis added).
In 2017, about nine years after Gordon’s misdemeanor conviction, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued Gordon a notice to appeаr, charging him as removable based on the Virginia conviction. DHS contended that the Virginia conviction qualified as a removable offense under the INA removal statute, which defines “[c]ertain firearm offenses” as follows:
Any alien who at any time after admission is convicted under any law of purchasing, selling, offering for sale, exchanging, using, owning, possessing, or carrying, or of attempting or conspiring to purchase, sell, offer for sale, exchange, use, own, possess, or carry, any weapon, part, or accessory which is a firearm or destructive device (as defined in [
18 U.S.C. § 921(a) ]) in violation of any law is deportable.2
(A) any weapon . . . which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon; (C) any firearm muffler or firearm silencer; or (D) any destructive device. Such term does not include an antique firearm.
(emphasis added). Thus, the federal definition of “firearm” that applies to the INA removal statute explicitly excludes antique firearms. In contrast, the statutory language in
Relying on this distinction, Gordon filed a motion to terminate the removal proceedings,
The government appealed the IJ’s decision to the BIA. In reversing the IJ’s decision, the BIA acknowledgеd that the Virginia statute was facially broader than the INA’s federal firearm offense. However, relying on dictum in the Supreme Court’s decision in Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184 (2013), the BIA held that Gordon was required, but failed, to show there was a “realistic probability” that the Commonwealth would prosecute a case under
Because Gordon presented neither a decision by a Virginia court in which a defendant had been convicted under Section 18.2-280(A) for using an antique firearm, nor a decision by a Virginia court that explicitly defined the word “firearm” as used in Section 18.2-280(A) to include antique firearms, the BIA held that Gordon failed to make the required shоwing and was removable under the INA removal statute.3 The BIA ultimately entered an order of removal.
Gordon filed this petition for review and a motion for stay of removal. After this Court denied the motion for stay, Gordon was removed to Jamaica. Gordon now asks that we grant his petition for review and order the United States government to facilitate his return to this country.
II.
A.
The central issue before us is whether the willful discharge of “any firearm” in a public place without resulting bodily injury, as prohibited by
In response, the government maintains that neither the statutory language nor the cited Virginia court decisions directly addrеss whether the term “any firearm,” as used in Section 18.2-280(A), encompasses antique firearms. According to the government, Gordon was required under the Moncrieffe dictum to identify a decision by
B.
We review de novo the BIA’s decision. Omargharib v. Holder, 775 F.3d 192, 196 (4th Cir. 2014). Although оur review of a decision involving the BIA’s interpretation of the INA generally warrants deference, no such deference is owed to the BIA’s construction of state law, which does not lie within the BIA’s expertise.4 Ramirez v. Sessions, 887 F.3d 693, 702 (4th Cir. 2018); Omargharib, 775 F.3d at 196.
In asserting that Gordon is removable based on his Virginia conviction, the government bears the burden of proving removability “by clear and convincing evidence.”
When determining whether a state conviction qualifies as a removable offense under the INA, we use the familiar categorical approach set forth by the Supreme Court in Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990). See Castendet-Lewis v. Sessions, 855 F.3d 253, 260 (4th Cir. 2017). Under this approach, we do not consider the petitioner’s criminal conduct underlying the conviction, but instead focus on the statutory definition of the state offense. Id. When that definition has been interpreted by the state’s appellate courts, that interpretation is compelling in our analysis. United States v. Aparicio-Soria, 740 F.3d 152, 154 (4th Cir. 2014) (en banc).
If the elements of the state offense fall within the definition of the federal offense under the INA, then the state offense qualifies as a removable offense. Omargharib, 775 F.3d at 196. But if the state offense “sweeps more broadly,” criminalizing more conduct than the federal offense, the prior conviction does not qualify as a removable offense. See id. (quoting Descamps v. United States, 570 U.S. 254, 261 (2013)).
C.
With this legal framework in mind, we turn to consider the Virginia offensе of
As explained above, the plain language of Section 18.2-280(A) prohibits the willful discharge of ”any firearm” in certain public places.
We also observe that the Supreme Court of Virginia considered the identical term “any firearm” in the context of former
possessing. Id. at 144-45. Accordingly, the court held that the term “any firearm” included all firearms without regard to whether the weapon presently was operable. Id. at 145-46.
Our analysis of the plain language of Section 18.2-280 also is supported by recent enactments of Virginia’s legislature explicitly excluding “antique firearms” in the language of certain laws governing the regulation and possession of firearms. For example, in 2017, the General Assembly amended Section 18.2-308.26 to permit certain classes of felons to possess “antique firearms,” see
Additionally,
Our analysis of Section 18.2-280(A) thus is dictated by the plain language of the statute, which has not been narrowed by the General Assembly to exclude “antique firearms.” See United States v. Simms, 914 F.3d 229, 240-41 (4th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (explaining that “[t]he text of a statute is a court’s first and foremost guide to its meaning“). When, as here, a state legislature has expressed its intent in plain and unambiguous terms, that statutory language governs our application of the categorical approach. See Soliman v. Gonzales, 419 F.3d 276, 278, 285 (4th Cir. 2005) (analyzing Virginia statute prohibiting “credit card fraud,” and explaining that the statutory language covered broader cirсumstances than “taking of property” as required for a “theft offense” under the INA,
D.
Our conclusion is not affected by the government’s claim that the Virginia conviction nevertheless qualifies as a removable offense because Gordon failed to present evidence of a conviction in Virginia under Section 18.2-280(A) for the discharge of an antique firearm. The government’s argumеnt is based on the dictum from Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184 (2013), noted above, in which the Supreme Court stated that “[t]o defeat the categorical comparison” of a federal firearm offense with a state offense that lacks an exception for antique firearms, “a noncitizen would have to demonstrate that the State actually prosecutes the relevant offense in cases involving antique firearms.”7 Id. at 205-06
The flaw in the government’s argument, however, is its failure to recognize that when the state, thrоugh plain statutory language, has defined the reach of a state statute to include conduct that the federal offense does not, the categorical analysis is complete; there is no categorical match. Here, the plain language of Section 18.2-280(A), supported by decisions of Virginia’s courts and actions of the General Assembly, make clear that
discharge of an antique firearm is conduct prohibited under that statute. In such circumstances, the burden dоes not shift to the respondent to “find a case” in which the state successfully prosecuted a defendant for the overbroad conduct.8
This conclusion is supported by the Supreme Court’s analysis in Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), issued three years after Moncrieffe. In Mathis, applying the categorical approach, the Court considered the plain language of Iowa’s burglary statute, which applied to a broader set of circumstances than generic burglary, namely, unlawful entry into “any building, structure, [or] land, water, or air vehicle.” 136 S. Ct. at 2250 (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted). Because generic burglary requires unlawful entry into only a “building or other structure,” the Iowa crime did not qualify as a predicate offense under the Armed Career Criminal Act,
The Court in Mathis held that the “undisputed disparity” between the Iowa statutory language and the generic offense resolved the case in the defendant’s favor. Id. at 2251. And, notably, the Court explained that the “longstanding principles” of the categorical approach are applicаble “regardless of whether a statute omits or instead specifies alternative possible means of commission.” Id. Thus, as the Court instructed, overbreadth in the state statutory language under comparison may manifest itself either by omission (here, by omitting an exclusion for antique weapons together with use of the word “any“) or by specifying additional means of commission. See id.
We also observe that our decision in the present case is in accord with analyses conducted by оur sister circuits. For example, the Second Circuit, employing a plain language analysis in a removal case brought under the INA, concluded that because a New York statute prohibiting the transfer of marijuana “on its face punishe[d] conduct classified as a federal misdemeanor” offense, the state offense did not qualify as an aggravated felony offense
see also United States v. Titties, 852 F.3d 1257, 1274-75 (10th Cir. 2017) (holding that state crime of pointing a firearm did not qualify as predicate offense under the ACCA, and stating that “reasonable probability” test did not apply when plain statutory language provided means of commission beyond scope of predicate offense under the ACCA); Chavez-Solis v. Lynch, 803 F.3d 1004, 1010 (9th Cir. 2015) (“when a ‘state statute’s greater breadth is evident from its tеxt,’ a petitioner need not point to an actual case applying the statute of conviction in a nongeneric manner” (citation omitted)). Accordingly, we conclude that the Moncrieffe dictum does not require a petitioner to “find a case” in which the state successfully prosecuted a defendant for the overbroad conduct when, as here, the language of a statute unambiguously is broader than the federal offense under comparison.
III.
Gordon next asks us to order the government to facilitate his return to the United States. Because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued a policy10 indicating that it will facilitate the return of removed non-citizens who prevail on their petitions for review before a federal court of appeal, we conclude that Gordon’s request is reasonable and that the government should be directed to comply with this existing policy. But see United States v. Castillo-Rivera, 853 F.3d 218, 223 (5th Cir. 2017) (en banc) (explaining “[t]here is no exception to the actual case requirement . . . where a court concludes a state statute is broader on its face” than the comparable federal offense).
See Ramirez, 887 F.3d at 706-07 (observing that “judicial review would otherwise be frustrated” if the petitioner is not restored to the status he had before removal).
IV.
For the reasons stated, we hold that the BIA erred as a matter of law when it concluded that the offense of willful discharge of any firearm under
PETITION FOR REVIEW GRANTED, ORDER OF REMOVAL VACATED, AND REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS
