Court Broadens INS Deportation Powers

The Supreme Court gave the Immigration and Naturalization Service “broad discretion” in deciding whether to reopen a deportation proceeding, ruling Tuesday that the courts generally should not second-guess judgments made by immigration officials.

The unanimous decision, which overturns an appeals court ruling in California, says that the federal courts should not intervene in deportation matters unless the agency has “abused its discretion.”

Foreign Relations Issues

“INS officials must exercise especially sensitive political functions that implicate questions of foreign relations,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, and federal courts should not casually substitute their judgment for that of agency officials.

The ruling ends an attempt by Dr. Assibi L. Abudu, a native of Ghana and a graduate of the University of Southern California, to avoid deportation to England.

Abudu had come to the United States on a student visa in 1976 and overstayed his visit. He pleaded guilty in 1981 to charges of seeking to obtain the drug demerol through fraud. In July, 1982, an immigration judge ordered him deported, and two years later the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed his appeal.

Political Grounds Cited

Deportees have the right to appeal their cases to the federal courts of appeals. Abudu contended that his case should be reopened on political grounds, noting that the military dictators who took power in his homeland in 1981 had targeted his brother and his friends for arrest.

Abudu said he was visited in 1984 by a Ghanaian official who asked him to return home, and he interpreted this as an implied threat by the regime. If England later refused to accept him, his attorney argued, Abudu could face political persecution at home.

Based on this new evidence, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1986 ordered that his case be reopened. Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles said that Abudu had presented enough evidence to require the INS to reconsider his appeal from deportation and a request for asylum. He was joined by Judges Harry Pregerson of Los Angeles and J. Baline Anderson of Boise, Ida.

The Justice Department appealed this decision (INS vs. Abudu, 86-1128) to the high court, arguing that the INS had heard most of Abudu’s evidence earlier and refused to stop his deportation.

Stevens’ Decision Assailed

Arthur C. Helton, an attorney for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in New York, said that Tuesday’s ruling will not affect many refugees because few appeal their deportation orders in federal court by citing entirely new evidence. But he lambasted Stevens for saying that “foreign relations” can play a part in deciding a deportation case.

“Those kind of foreign relations questions should have no role in adjudicating whether a refugee is entitled to asylum,” said Helton, who had filed a brief in support of Abudu. “This man did not get a chance to have a hearing on his case, and we think he deserved the benefit of the doubt.”