Criminal Defense of Immigrants

(A)  In General.  Congress frequently specified convictions from listed jurisdictions as triggering certain grounds of removal.  For example, the aggravated felony ground of deportation and the controlled substances ground of inadmissibility specifically list foreign convictions, but the domestic violence ground of deportation does not.  See § 7.25(C), supra.  Similarly, some grounds specifically list the following types of jurisdiction whose convictions trigger removal: 

                (a) local court systems, see § 7.26(C), infra;

                (b) military courts, see § 7.26(D), infra; and

                (c) tribal courts.  See § 7.26(E), infra.

This gives rise to the argument that since Congress did not list certain types of conviction in a given ground of removal, convictions from that jurisdiction do not trigger removal under that ground.  See Appendix G, infra, for an analogous argument concerning unlisted nonsubstantive offenses.

The maxim of statutory interpretation, “expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” means that where a statute lists the items to which it applies, “all omissions should be understood as exclusions.”[126]  Therefore, a statutory ground of removal which lists convictions from certain jurisdictions as triggering the ground of removal will be interpreted as excluding other jurisdictions which are not listed.

[126] N. Singer, Statutes and Statutory Construction § 47:23, p. 307 (6th ed. 2002); Longview Fibre Co. v. Rasmussen, 980 F.2d 1307, 1312-13 (9th Cir. 1992) (statutory construction maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius means when some statutory provisions expressly mention a requirement, the omission of that requirement from other statutory provisions implies that the drafter intended the inclusion of the requirement in some instances but not others).