There are three chief immigration consequences of conviction or admission of one or more crimes of moral turpitude:

 

(1)      Conviction or admission of one or more CMTs will, under certain circumstances, trigger inadmissibility.  See § § 4.1-4.8, infra.

 

(2)      One CMT conviction will, under certain circumstances, trigger deportability.  See § § 5.1-5.11, infra.

 

(3)      Two or more CMT convictions will, under other circumstances, trigger deportability.  See § § 5.12-5.15, infra.

 

Conviction or admission of a CMT may also bar a noncitizen from demonstrating the “Good Moral Character” required for various immigration benefits, such as naturalization.  See § 3.14, infra.

 

Under certain limited circumstances, even if there is no conviction, a noncitizen’s admission of having committed a crime involving moral turpitude may trigger inadmissibility (see § 4.4, infra), or disqualify the noncitizen from certain forms of relief.  Merely committing a CMT, however, will not make a noncitizen deportable.

 

            Noncitizens convicted of crimes of moral turpitude are, in general, given more lenient treatment under the immigration law than those convicted of aggravated felonies or controlled substances offenses.  Most grounds of relief from removal may waive CMTs.  See Chapter 3, infra.  A given criminal conviction may qualify as both a CMT and an aggravated felony and/or controlled substances offense, triggering different immigration consequences than those triggered by a CMT.

Depending on a noncitizen’s immigration status and history, conviction or admission of commission of even a single CMT could mean ineligibility for all forms of relief and mandatory deportation.  Therefore, it is always important to look at the conviction or admission in this context to make an accurate determination of the exact immigration consequences of the CMT.

Other

EFFECTS OF REMOVAL
The Deported: Immigrants Uprooted from the Country They Call Home https://features.hrw.org/features/the_deported/index.html Human Rights Watch report on immigration arrests and deportations in 2017, details of the human impact of removal on undocumented immigrants, their families, and their communities. The report draws on 43 interviews with long-term immigrants deported since 2016.

REMOVALS BY COUNTRY
A DHS website lists the number of noncitizens that were removed to 224 different countries from the beginning of 2008 through February 22, 2010. http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG_11-81_May11.pdf