If I knew how to put a black box around a posting to signify a sad, dark day for non-citizens, I would do it for this posting as I write about a new decision, Nunez Reyes v. Holder, which overrules Lujan-Armendariz v. INS,  a decision that recognized state expungements of simple possession drug offenses so that the harsh immigration consequences of drug convictions would not apply to those with expungements. First, what are the “harsh consequences” of simple possession offenses?…

It is not an understatement to term “stunning” a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on July 8, 2011, in Hernandez-Cruz v. Holder. The court held that Cal. Penal Code § 459, burglary, is not a theft offense and thus not a crime of moral turpitude as a theft offense or a basis to conclude that someone is an aggravated felon for commiting a theft offense if the person did not break the law when entering the building or structure that led to the …

There is a foreign woman who goes unnamed in the United States media — though I predict not for much longer. She has been identified as an asylee from Guinea, a West African nation. The media reports are quite unclear about the lady’s actual immigration status. She accused Dominique Strauss Kahn, the former director of the International Monetary Fund and expected candidate for the presidency of France, of trying to vaginally rape her and of forcing her to fellate him at a hotel…

Martin Lawrence Martin Lawrence was born in Germany, but is a U.S. citizen by derivation. He apparently was convicted after he was caught in the Burbank Airport while attempting to board an airplane with a 9 mm. Beretta in his carry-on. He got two years probation for this according to media reports. Firearms offenses are deportable offenses. INA § 237(a)(2)(C). News reports note a long criminal record yet no other convictions are noted in the media despite allegations of domestic…