Enrico St. Cyr v. Immigration and Naturalization Service
229 F.3d 406, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 22472 (2000)
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Rule of Law:
Statutory provisions that eliminate eligibility for discretionary relief from deportation do not apply retroactively to aliens who entered a guilty plea to a deportable offense before the statutes were enacted, as doing so would attach new, impermissible legal consequences to the past act of pleading guilty.
Facts:
- Enrico St. Cyr, a native of Haiti, was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1986.
- St. Cyr's parents and sister are U.S. citizens, and his brother is a lawful permanent resident.
- On March 8, 1996, St. Cyr pled guilty to the sale of a controlled substance in Connecticut.
- At the time of his guilty plea, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) made him deportable but also permitted him to apply for a discretionary waiver of deportation under former § 212(c).
- In April and September 1996, after St. Cyr's plea, Congress passed the AEDPA and IIRIRA.
- These new statutes eliminated the availability of the § 212(c) discretionary waiver for aliens convicted of aggravated felonies, the category into which St. Cyr's conviction fell.
Procedural Posture:
- The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiated removal proceedings against Enrico St. Cyr in 1997.
- An Immigration Judge (IJ) found St. Cyr removable and ruled him ineligible to apply for a discretionary waiver of deportation under former INA § 212(c).
- St. Cyr appealed the IJ's decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).
- The BIA dismissed St. Cyr's appeal, affirming that he was statutorily ineligible for § 212(c) relief due to the 1996 law changes.
- St. Cyr then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
- The District Court granted the habeas petition, holding that the new laws could not be applied retroactively to bar St. Cyr's eligibility for relief.
- The INS, as the appellant, appealed the District Court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with St. Cyr as the appellee.
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Issue:
Does the repeal of discretionary relief from deportation by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) apply retroactively to an alien who pled guilty to a deportable offense before these statutes were enacted?
Opinions:
Majority - Oakes, Senior Circuit Judge
No. The statutory bars to discretionary relief enacted in AEDPA and IIRIRA do not apply retroactively to aliens who pled guilty before the statutes' enactment because doing so would have an impermissible retroactive effect. The court's analysis follows the two-step framework from Landgraf v. USI Film Products. First, the court finds that Congress did not expressly prescribe whether the repeal of § 212(c) relief should apply to pre-enactment guilty pleas, rendering the statutes' temporal reach ambiguous. Second, the court determines that applying the new laws would have a genuine retroactive effect because it would upset the settled expectations of aliens who pled guilty in reliance on the availability of discretionary relief. The court reasons that the relevant past event is not the commission of the crime, but the legal act of pleading guilty, which often involves a calculated decision based on the immigration consequences under existing law. Eliminating the possibility of relief attaches a new and severe legal consequence—certain deportation—to that past decision, which is impermissible under the presumption against retroactivity.
Dissenting - Walker, Jr., Circuit Judge
Yes. The repeal of discretionary relief from deportation applies to St. Cyr because Congress's intent to apply IIRIRA's provisions was plain. The dissent argues that the majority ignores the clear statutory framework of IIRIRA, which established a specific effective date (April 1, 1997) and made its permanent provisions applicable to all aliens whose proceedings began after that date, unless expressly exempted. Because St. Cyr's proceedings began after the effective date and he was not exempted, the new rules, including the elimination of § 212(c) relief, must apply to him. Furthermore, even if congressional intent were unclear, applying the new law would not have an impermissible retroactive effect. The dissent contends that withdrawing a form of discretionary relief does not attach new legal consequences to past conduct; the primary consequence of the criminal conviction was always potential deportation. The change merely removed a previously available form of discretionary relief, which is not a vested right.
Analysis:
This decision establishes a critical protection for non-citizens in the criminal justice system by holding that the legal consequences of a guilty plea are fixed at the time the plea is entered. It distinguishes the underlying criminal act from the separate legal decision to plead guilty, recognizing that defendants rely on existing immigration law when making such plea bargains. By finding the retroactive application of AEDPA and IIRIRA's relief-stripping provisions impermissible, the court reinforced the strong presumption against retroactivity articulated in Landgraf. This ruling created a significant circuit split on the issue, paving the way for eventual Supreme Court resolution and impacting thousands of cases where aliens faced deportation based on pre-1996 convictions.
