Aggravated Felonies

To trigger deportation, the conviction must fall within an aggravated felony category listed in the statute.  That is, the elements of the offense of conviction must satisfy the statutory definition of a particular category of aggravated felony offense, and the necessary sentence (if any) must have been potential or imposed, as the definition of the particular aggravated felony category requires.  Only then does the conviction constitute an aggravated felony.  Chapter 4 is devoted to a description of the analysis by which immigration or federal courts will address the question whether a given conviction constitutes an aggravated felony, and Chapter 5 contains a great deal of information on the definition of each of the aggravated felony categories.

All reported cases of the BIA and all federal courts holding that a particular conviction does or does not fall within a particular aggravated felony category are indexed in this book in two different ways: by aggravated felony category, in Appendix A, and by type of crime, in Appendix B.