Thread: Justices to Rule on Immigrant Car Theft

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Justices to Rule on Immigrant Car Theft
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

1:10 PM PDT, September 26, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed today to decide whether all immigrants involved in car theft, even as accomplices, must be deported.

A strict law passed in 1996 says that immigrants who have committed an "aggravated felony" in this country must be sent home, regardless of how long they have lived here or whether they have a family and a job.

The Justice Department and some lower courts have disagreed on which crimes are aggravated felonies.

Next week, the high court will hear a case testing whether immigrants who are convicted of drug possession can be charged and deported as felons. The outcome is expected to affect tens of thousands of immigrants.

Meeting this week for the first time since June, the justices announced that they had agreed to hear the government's claim that auto thieves and their accomplices were guilty of a deportable crime.

The case before the court involves a California law on auto theft. Government lawyers said all 50 states have similar rules.

Four years ago, Luis Alexander Duenas-Alvarez, a native of Peru, was convicted in Marin County of stealing a Honda Accord. Federal authorities took him into custody for deportation. In California, the crime of auto theft is an aggravated felony under the federal law, the government said.

But this year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked his deportation. It ruled that the California law on auto thefts was too broad because it covered accomplices.

In an appeal on behalf of Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, government lawyers said the 9th Circuit was wrong on both counts. First, they said, Duenas-Alvarez stole the car and therefore was no mere accomplice. Besides, they added, Congress meant to include the accomplices to a crime.

The government said at least 8,000 cases would be affected by the court's ruling in Gonzales vs. Duenas-Alvarez. The oral argument was set for Dec. 5.


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david.savage@latimes.com

The Justice Department and some lower courts have disagreed on which crimes are aggravated felonies.

This is bullcrap. If the perpetrator was an American citizen, the courts wouldn' have a problem deciding if car theft was an aggrivated felony or not.

They are forgetting their first crime of being illegal! Any crime where an arrest is made should be basis for deportation. It shouldn't matter if it is a misdemeanor or felony arrest. Send them back! Our prisons are already overflowing and we don't need or want anymore.