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Supreme Court Upholds Strict Deportation Law
The 8-1 decision upholds a strict 1996 law that adopted a no-leniency policy for those who returned illegally to this country after having been deported.
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The Supreme Court took up the case because several lower courts — including the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction in California and eight other Western states — had adopted a lenient standard for illegal immigrants who had been in the United States for decades. The 9th Circuit judges had ruled that Congress did not mean to apply the new law to illegal immigrants who had reentered the country before 1996.
But writing for the majority on the Supreme Court, Justice David H. Souter disagreed, saying that Congress meant the law to apply to every once-deported immigrant who had returned illegally and stayed.