Chapter 30 - § 30.4 • IMMIGRATION CONSEQUENCES
| Jurisdiction | Colorado |
Criminal convictions — and in certain situations, conduct that does not require a criminal conviction — can trigger a wide array of adverse immigration consequences. These consequences range from presumptively mandatory deportation, to mandatory immigration detention and the elimination of important types of discretionary relief from removal, to adverse impacts on travel outside of the United States and eligibility for citizenship. Depending upon a non-citizen's immigration status and prior criminal history, a particular conviction may have impacts along the full spectrum of potential consequences, certain limited impacts on specific issues, or no adverse impact.
§ 30.4.1—Inadmissibility To The United States
The criminal grounds of inadmissibility generally apply to non-citizens who are undocumented, as well as to those who have fallen out of status or who are applying to adjust status to become an LPR.106 In these situations, a conviction that falls within one or more criminal grounds of inadmissibility will generally trigger a legal impediment — often referred to as a criminal bar — to the future adjustment of status. However, many of these grounds of inadmissibility provide for a waiver of the offense under certain circumstances.
For example, a non-citizen who triggers the CIMT ground of criminal inadmissibility may apply for a waiver for the offense under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(h) if he or she can show that the denial of such a waiver would result in extreme hardship to the citizen or LPR spouse, parent, or child of the non-citizen.107 Under other circumstances, there may be no statutory waiver for the offense, and a person in such a circumstance is faced with a bar to admissibility that allows for no statutory waiver.108 For example, a conviction for any controlled substance offense other than 30 grams or less of marijuana for personal use, or a finding that there is "reason to believe" a non-citizen is a drug trafficker, allows for no statutory waiver. In those situations, a non-citizen will be permanently barred from obtaining lawful status, subject to very limited exceptions.
§ 30.4.2—Deportability From The United States
For those non-citizens who have been lawfully admitted to the United States, certain convictions can trigger potential deportability.109 For example, convictions for certain CIMT, firearms, child abuse, domestic violence, or controlled substance offenses will often make an LPR deportable. Depending on when the conviction occurred and how long the person has been an LPR, such a conviction could also eliminate common forms of relief from removal, such as cancellation of removal, by cutting off a statutory eligibility requirement for the offense known as the period of continuous residence.110 Finally, a conviction for an aggravated felony offense may not only render a person deportable, it will often also destroy nearly all defenses to removal as well as potentially present a lifetime bar to admissibility in the future, resulting in de facto lifetime banishment from the United States.
§ 30.4.3—Mandatory Immigration Detention
An equally onerous immigration consequence of certain criminal offenses involves the application of INA § 236(c) (8 U.S.C. § 1226(c)), commonly known as the mandatory detention provision. This statutory provision allows for the categorical denial of bond in immigration proceedings to broad classes of non-citizens who have been convicted of certain offenses under the criminal grounds of inadmissibility or deportability.111 Nearly all grounds of criminal inadmissibility and deportability trigger the mandatory detention provision under the INA, and thus a significant percentage of non-citizens with criminal convictions that are placed in immigration...
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