Panagis Vartelas, Petitioner v. Eric H. Holder, JR., Attorney General (566 U.S. 257)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 28, 2012 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 566 U.S. 257 · 132 S. Ct. 1479
- Decided
- March 28, 2012
- Term
- October Term 2011
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. Panagis Vartelas, a native of Greece, became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 1989. He pleaded guilty to a felony (conspiring to make a counterfeit security) in 1994, and served a prison sentence of four months for that offense. Vartelas traveled to Greece in 2003 to visit his parents. On his return to the United States a week later, he was treated as an inadmissible alien and placed in removal proceedings. Under the law governing at the time of Var-telas’ plea, an alien in his situation could travel abroad for brief periods without jeopardizing his resident alien status. See 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(13) (1988 ed.), as construed in Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U. S. 449 (1963). In 1996, Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 110 Stat. 3009-546. That Act effectively precluded foreign travel by lawful permanent residents who had a conviction like Vartelas’. Under IIRIRA, such aliens, on return from a sojourn abroad, however brief, may be permanently removed from the United States. See 8 U. S. C. § 1101(a)(13)(C)(v); § 1182(a)(2). This case presents a question of retroactivity not addressed by Congress: As to a lawful permanent resident convicted of a crime before the effective date of IIRIRA, which regime governs, the one in force at the time of the conviction, or…
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