Ortiz v. Lynch, __ F.3d __ (8th Cir. Aug. 6, 2015) (Minnesota conviction for violation of Minn.Stat. 609.50, subd. 2(2), obstruction of legal process, is not an aggravated felony crime of violence under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(F), INA 101(a)(43)(F), since the minimum amount of force required to sustain a conviction under the obstruction of legal process is not violent force as required by 18 U.S.C. 16).

Fraser v. Lynch, __ F.3d __ (8th Cir. Jul. 31, 2015) (government established removability based on Canadian drug conviction by submission of Canadian court Information and Trial Disposition referencing an indictment where Canadian law defines an indictment to include an information.).

United States v. Parral-Dominguez, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 4479530 (4th Cir. Jul. 23, 2015) (North Carolina conviction for discharging firearm into occupied building, under N.C.G.S.A. 14"34.1(a) (discharge a firearm into a structure while it is occupied, when the defendant had reasonable grounds to believe that the building might be occupied by one or more persons), N.C.G.S.A. 14"34.1(a), was not crime of violence for purposes of imposing a 16-level sentence enhancement under U.S.S.G.

In cases charging sales and possession for sale of a controlled substance, defense counsel should consider pleading to a single count of Health & Safety Code 11352(a), under People v. Palmer, 58 Cal.4th 110 (2013), without identifying any particular factual basis. The specific offense for the plea should be that the defendant "offered to sell" an unidentified controlled substance in violation of 11352(a), striking any reference to a specific substance in the charge, making sure that the charge contains all the statutory alternatives. A sentence of less than 180 days is desirable.

Morales v. Chadbourne, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 WL 4385945 (1st Cir. Jul. 17, 2015) (U.S. citizen, who was kept in custody due to immigration detainer, after she was entitled to release, was subjected to new seizure for Fourth Amendment purposes).

A conviction of false imprisonment, under Penal Code 236, 237, committed by menace is not a crime of moral turpitude. Turijan v. Holder, 744 F.3d 617, 621 (9th Cir. 2014). This offense also arguably does not constitute an aggravated felony crime of violence, under 18 U.S.C. 16(a), 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(F), since there is no element requiring the intentional use of violent force. Moreover, it cannot constitute an aggravated felony crime of violence under 16(b), because the Supreme Court found the ordinary case analysis to be unconstitutionally vague. See Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S.

Dept of State Cable re Application of Lujan-Armendariz to Applicants Entering in Ninth Circuit POE, AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 13012240. (Posted 1/22/13) (Ninth Circuit law applies to immigrants entering the U.S. at a Port of Entry within the Ninth Circuit if the Immigrant intends to reside within the Ninth Circuit).

The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States
The American Immigration Council released the report, The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States by Walter A. Ewing, Ph.D., Daniel E. Martnez, Ph.D., and Rubn G. Rumbaut, Ph.D. For years, the quantitative data has established two key facts with respect to the relationship between immigrants and crime: immigration is associated with lower crime rates and immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be serious criminals. The new report also describes the ways in which U.S.

Linus Chan, in The ordinary cases demise in criminal sentencing & its implications for immigration law, at Crimmigration.com, summarized the impact of Johnson v. United States as follows:

After the Supreme Court announced the ordinary case method in James, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), and a couple of federal circuit courts began to adopt it in immigration cases when deciding whether someone has committed a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. 16(b). Section 16(b)s language is not an exact match to ACCAs residual clause, but isnt far off.

Based on the Supreme Court's definition of fraud and deceit in Kawashima v. Holder, 132 S.Ct. 1166 (Feb. 21, 2012), there is a reasonably good argument that conviction of any false statement offense that lacks materiality of a false statement as an essential element does not constitute a fraud or deceit aggravated felony, under INA 101(a)(43)(M)(i), 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(43)(M)(i). Kawashima, supra, at ___ (We conclude that Mrs. Kawashima's conviction establishes that, by knowingly and willfully assisting her husband's filing of a materially false tax return, Mrs.