MATTHEW JOHN HYLTON v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL
No. 19-14825
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
March 31, 2021
Agency No. A079-397-192
[PUBLISH]
MATTHEW JOHN HYLTON, Petitioner,
versus
U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent.
Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals
(March 31, 2021)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, JILL PRYOR and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
This petition for review requires us to decide whether a denaturalized alien is removable as an aggravated felon based on convictions entered while he was an American citizen. The Board of Immigration Appeals ordered Matthew Hylton removed as an alien convicted of aggravated felonies after his admission to the United States. But unlike most aggravated felons facing removal, Hylton was a citizen when he was convicted. Federal law provides that “[a]ny alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission is deportable.”
I. BACKGROUND
Matthew Hylton was admitted to the United States as a nonimmigrant visitor from Jamaica in 1993. He became an American citizen on September 16, 2008. The day of his naturalization ceremony, Hylton completed a form in which he affirmed that, since his naturalization interview, he had not “knowingly committed any crime or offense, for which he had not been arrested.” This affirmation was false.
Six days before the ceremony, Hylton had robbed a bank. His transgression did not stay undetected for long. The next year, he pleaded guilty to charges of armed bank robbery and unlawful transfer of a firearm.
In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal proceedings against Hylton. It charged him as removable because he had been convicted of aggravated felonies.
Hylton moved to terminate the removal proceedings. He argued that he was not
The immigration judge concluded that Costello was inapposite. He based his conclusion on a line of decisions from the Board of Immigration Appeals. According to the Board, Costello grounded its holding on the right of an alien to seek a judicial recommendation against deportation, so it is not binding in contexts where such a recommendation is unavailable. The immigration judge also pointed to factual differences between Hylton‘s case and Costello. He denied Hylton‘s motion to terminate the proceedings, sustained the charges of removability, and ordered Hylton removed to Jamaica.
The Board dismissed Hylton‘s appeal in a single-member decision. It adopted the immigration judge‘s reasoning. And it reiterated that its decisions in Matter of Rossi, 11 I. & N. Dec. 514 (B.I.A. 1966), and Matter of Gonzalez-Muro, 24 I. & N. Dec. 472 (B.I.A. 2008), control in removal proceedings where there is no possibility of a judicial recommendation against deportation: in those proceedings, an alien may be removed for convictions he sustained while he was a citizen. Hylton petitions for review of the Board‘s decision.
II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW
We review only the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, except to the extent that the Board adopts the opinion of the immigration judge. Kazemzadeh v. U.S. Att‘y Gen., 577 F.3d 1341, 1350 (11th Cir. 2009). We review questions of statutory interpretation de novo, but “[i]f the statute is ... ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, we afford some level of deference to the Board‘s decision and evaluate whether it permissibly construed the statute.” Hincapie-Zapata v. U.S. Att‘y Gen., 977 F.3d 1197, 1200 (11th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted). “We afford Chevron deference to the Board‘s precedential decisions,” including single-judge decisions that “rest[] on precedential authority from the Board.” Id.
III. DISCUSSION
“Any alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission is deportable.”
A. The Plain Meaning of Section 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii) Excludes Aliens Who Were Citizens at the Time of Their Convictions.
“As a general rule, an agency‘s interpretation of a statute which it administers is entitled to [Chevron] deference if the statute is silent or ambiguous and the interpretation is based on a reasonable construction of the statute.” Sanchez Fajardo v. U.S. Att‘y Gen., 659 F.3d 1303, 1307 (11th Cir. 2011). At the first step of Chevron, we evaluate whether Congress has written clearly. Barton v. U.S. Att‘y Gen., 904 F.3d 1294, 1298 (11th Cir. 2018). If it has not, then we consider, at the
To determine whether a statute has a plain meaning, we ask whether its meaning may be settled by the “traditional tools of statutory construction.” Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843 n.9 (1984). These tools encompass our “regular interpretive method,” Gen. Dynamics Land Sys., Inc. v. Cline, 540 U.S. 581, 600 (2004), including the canons of construction. We conclude that the canons make the meaning of section
Begin with the prior-construction canon. That canon establishes that “[i]f a statute uses words or phrases that have already received authoritative construction by the jurisdiction‘s court of last resort, they are to be understood according to that construction.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts § 54, at 322 (2012). “When Congress use[s] the materially same language in [a more recent enactment], it presumptively [is] aware of the longstanding judicial interpretation of the phrase and intend[s] for it to retain its established meaning.” Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP v. Appling, 138 S. Ct. 1752, 1762 (2018).
Decades before Congress adopted what is now section
Costello identified two features of this language as key to its meaning. These features distinguished the provision from an earlier removal ground that targeted violators of the Espionage Act of 1917, which the Court had construed to apply to aliens regardless of their status when convicted. Id. at 122–23. Unlike the earlier ground, the moral-turpitude provision “employ[ed] neither a past tense verb nor a single specific time limitation.” Id. at 124. In other words, it referred to an alien who “is convicted,” not to aliens who “have been” convicted. Id. at 121, 123 (internal quotation marks omitted). And it did not specify application to convictions that occurred after a particular date. Id. at 121.
Congress retained these two features when it adopted the aggravated-felony provision. This provision too refers to an “alien who is convicted.”
The two provisions use materially the same language, despite slight differences. The provision that governs Hylton‘s petition renders deportable “[a]ny alien who is convicted of an aggravated felony at any time after admission,” while the provision from Costello applied to “[a]ny alien . . . who . . . at any time after entry is convicted of two crimes involving moral turpitude.” Id.; Costello, 376 U.S. at 121. But we do not see how these slight differences alter the category of aliens affected by these provisions.
Because Congress imported previously interpreted language when it added the removal ground for aggravated felons, the analysis in Costello informs our reading of the newer provision. Costello acknowledged that, read alone, the language was susceptible to two “possible readings“; it could be read to “permit[] deportation only of a person who was an alien at the time of his convictions” or to “permit[] deportation of a person now an alien who at any time after entry has been convicted of two crimes, regardless of his status at the time of the convictions.” Costello, 376 U.S. at 124. But after applying the ordinary rules of statutory interpretation, the Court concluded that the provision could not be applied against an alien who was a citizen at the time of his convictions. Id. at 126–28.
Two rules of interpretation were independently dispositive in Costello. First, under the then-existing scheme, a deportation ordered under the moral-turpitude provision would be cancelled if the court that issued the convictions made a
judicial recommendation against deportation within 30 days of issuing its sentence. Id. at 126; see
Taken together, the prior-construction canon counsels in favor of reading section
The presumption of consistent usage also supports reading section
under consideration.” Id. § 25, at 170, 173. Congress enacted the provision at issue to follow immediately the provision from Costello. See Anti-Drug Abuse Act § 7344(a);
The relevant statutory scheme provides further support for this reading of section
class of aliens, completely nullif[ied] a procedure so intrinsic a part of the legislative scheme,” Costello, 376 U.S. at 127–28.
It makes no difference that the current statutory scheme no longer permits judicial recommendations against deportation. Congress abolished that form of relief in 1990. See Immigration Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-649, § 505, 104 Stat. 4978, 5050. But just as we apply a “strong presumption against implied repeals,” Ray v. Spirit Airlines, Inc., 767 F.3d 1220, 1222 (11th Cir. 2014), we apply a presumption against implied changes to the meaning of a still-in-force statute. “A clear, authoritative judicial holding on the meaning of a particular provision should not be cast in doubt . . . whenever a related though not utterly inconsistent provision is adopted[.]” Scalia & Garner, Reading Law § 55, at 331. If Congress wanted to alter the scope of the removability grounds, it would have done so explicitly.
Applying these canons of construction, we conclude that the meaning of section
the canons supply an answer, Chevron leaves the stage.” Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612, 1630 (2018) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The government contends that it is dispositive for purposes of the first step of Chevron that Costello referred to the language at issue as ambiguous. 376 U.S. at 124–25. But the provision in Costello was ambiguous only when read in isolation; the ambiguity no longer remained when the language was read in its statutory context, as it must be. Id.; Robinson v. Shell Oil Co., 519 U.S. 337, 341 (1997) (“The plainness or ambiguity of statutory language is determined by reference to the language itself, the specific context in which that language is used, and the broader context of the statute as a whole.“). And regardless, a pre-Chevron recognition of linguistic ambiguity does not necessarily establish ambiguity in the Chevron sense. United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC, 566 U.S. 478, 488–89 (2012) (plurality op.).
The Board‘s decision likewise rested on misunderstandings of Costello. The Board asserted that Costello was “primarily predicated” on the importance of the judicial recommendation against deportation. Rossi, 11 I. & N. Dec. at 515–16. But Costello identified the immigration rule of lenity as an independent basis for its holding. 376 U.S. at 128. When a court interprets a statute before the agency does and determines that the statute is unambiguous based on the rule
see also Sash v. Zenk, 439 F.3d 61, 67 n.6 (2d Cir. 2006) (Sotomayor, J.) (explaining that Brand X creates an exception to the ordinary rule that ”Chevron deference will apply prior to the rule of lenity“). And, setting the rule of lenity aside, the Board put too much weight on Congress‘s elimination of the judicial recommendation against deportation. We reiterate that that change did not impliedly alter the controlling construction of the removal provisions. Scalia & Garner, Reading Law § 55, at 331.
Nor, as the government asserts, did the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 impliedly alter the meaning of section
Finally, the factual distinctions identified by the government and the Board are immaterial. True enough, there are differences between Costello‘s background
and Hylton‘s. For example, Costello was an American citizen when he committed the crimes that became the basis for his removability, and Hylton was an alien. But Costello makes clear that, because section
B. We May Not Treat Denaturalized Aliens As If They Were Aliens at the Time of Their Convictions.
We are similarly unpersuaded by the government‘s alternative argument as to why we should deny Hylton‘s petition. The government asserts that, because denaturalization operates ab initio,
Garner et al., The Law of Judicial Precedent § 2, at 29 (2016). We may not pretend that Hylton was an alien all along. Okpala, 908 F.3d at 969–70.
IV. CONCLUSION
We GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the decision of the Board, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with our opinion.
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