The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ruled that immigrants with deferred adjudications for serious offenses are not eligible for removal waivers or asylum. This contradicts a previous argument that a Mexican national who arrived illegally in the US should not be denied access to deportation relief if his sentence was being delayed.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states that immigrants who are convicted for a “particularly serious crime by a final judgment” are not eligible for withholding of removal. A panel of three judges determined that deferred adjudications should be treated as formal convictions under state law since the term “final judgment” was not clearly defined in the statute in question. This judgment was made in accordance with a 1937 high court that ruled that a suspended sentence is equal to a final judgment.

The panel stated that a deferred adjudication will count as a conviction once it meets the INA definition of a conviction. This same judgment also applies to cases regarding asylum, since the asylum-related statute uses the same language of “convicted by final judgment.”

The Mexican national involved in this question had cut a person’s chest with a piece of glass, causing severe injury to the victim. Neither the BIA nor the immigration judge on the case considered this action self-defense because the defendant admitted to arguing with the victim before the injury. The defendant received 5 years of probation and was required to pay restitution and remain from contacting the victim, which supports the conclusion that this was a serious offense.

Following the decision that deferred adjudication necessarily limits a noncitizen’s access to removal withholding or asylum, the aforementioned panel of judges found that the defendant did not qualify for a removal waiver.

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