Thread: Supreme Court affirms government can ban 'encouragement' of illegal immigration

Supreme Court affirms government can ban 'encouragement' of illegal immigration




Story by Kaelan Deese • 47m ago

June 23, 2023







Supreme Court affirms government can ban 'encouragement' of illegal immigration© Provided by Washington Examiner


The Supreme Court affirmed on Friday the federal government's ability to deter any "encouragement" of illegal immigration, siding with the Justice Department.

In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the high court reversed a lower court's decision that found the crime unconstitutional under the First Amendment for steering too far into protected speech.

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Barrett clarified that the law only allows the federal government to punish any actual facilitation of illegal immigration, not just benign statements, so that the law does not actually infringe on free speech.

“Properly interpreted, this provision forbids only the intentional solicitation or facilitation of certain unlawful acts,” Barrett wrote.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the majority.

The ruling effectively upholds defendant Helaman Hansen's conviction under the law.

From 2012 to 2016, Hansen operated a program in which he charged up to $10,000 for a purported pathway to citizenship, claiming that undocumented immigrants could become citizens through a so-called adult adoption service. He persuaded 471 people to participate.

Hansen was convicted of two counts of violating a federal law that bans encouraging or willfully facilitating unlawful immigration for private financial gain. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down the law in early 2022, saying the language was so broad that it could be interpreted to punish mere statements supporting illegal immigration.

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In her dissent, Jackson argued that the majority "departs from ordinary principles of statutory interpretation to reach that result," saying that the court "rewrites the provision's text to include elements that Congress once adopted but later removed."

"It is neither our job nor our prerogative to retrofit federal statutes in a manner patently inconsistent with Congress’s choices," Jackson added.




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