U.S. Supreme Court finds two types of written notice satisfy legal requirements for immigration court
The United States Supreme Court recently issued a decision in Campos-Chaves v. Garland (2024), finding that the noncitizens cannot rescind their removal orders issued in absentia on the basis of defective notice.
The legal question at stake: whether ICE/OPLA properly initiated removal proceedings against an “inadmissible” (INA 212) or “deportable” (INA 237) noncitizen with a defective initial Notice to Appear (NTA).
In each of the underlying fact patterns, ICE issued an NTA that did not specify the time and place of the removal hearing, which was a common problem for many years. Eventually, ICE provided each alien with a notice of hearing that set the specific time and place of a removal hearing. None of the noncitizens showed up for court, and each was ordered removed in absentia (without being present). Each then sought to rescind the removal order due to the defective NTAs.
The Supreme Court consolidated the cases to resolve the question and held that, because each of the noncitizens received subsequent notice for the hearings they missed (when they were ultimately ordered removed), they cannot rescind the in absentia removal orders on the basis of defective notice.
This flies in the face of the plain legal language set forth by congress, and contradicts the court’s 8-1 iruling just a few years ago on the overlapping issues, but this is no surprise in the court that’s controlled by Alito and Thomas’ legally illiterate faction.
