Aggravated Felonies
§ 1.10 (F)
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(F) Rule of Lenity. The rules of statutory construction, in immigration cases, require the court to grant immigrants the benefit of all reasonable doubts, both of fact and law, in interpretation of the immigration statutes, because of the drastic, penal consequences of deportation. See § 4.41, infra.
The effect of these rules is to require the government to conclude that many convictions are not in fact aggravated felonies, even under the most counter-intuitive circumstances. No one should assume a conviction constitutes an aggravated felony without undertaking the most careful of analyses.
