Barton v. Barr
The Court ruled that a green card holder can be barred from seeking cancellation of deportation based on serious crimes committed during their first seven years in the U.S. — even if those crimes were not the ones that triggered the deportation proceeding.
The decision confirms that immigration judges function like sentencing judges in criminal court, able to look at a person's full criminal record — not just the offense that started the deportation case — when deciding whether a lawful permanent resident may even apply to stay in the country.
How it got here: An immigration judge found Barton removable and ineligible for cancellation of removal; the Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed; the Eleventh Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court took the case to resolve a circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Andre Barton, a Jamaican national who came to the U.S. as a child and became a lawful permanent resident, accumulated criminal convictions over 12 years: a firearms offense and aggravated assault in 1996, and drug offenses in 2007 and 2008. The government sought to deport him based on the firearms and drug convictions. When Barton applied for cancellation of removal — a form of relief that lets an immigration judge allow someone to stay — the government argued his 1996 assault offenses, committed during his first seven years in the country, separately barred him from even seeking that relief.
The question before the Court
Can the government deny a green card holder the chance to seek "cancellation of removal" — a form of relief from deportation — because of crimes from their first seven years in the country, even when those crimes were not the reason the government sought to deport them?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that a green card holder can be barred from seeking cancellation of removal based on any crimes listed in the immigration law's inadmissibility provisions that were committed during the first seven years of residence, even if those crimes were not the offenses that triggered the deportation proceeding.
The Court read the cancellation-of-removal statute as functioning like a recidivist sentencing law, allowing immigration judges to look beyond the specific offense that triggered removal and examine the person's full criminal record. Because Barton's 1996 aggravated assault offenses were covered crimes under the relevant inadmissibility provision, were committed during his first seven years of residence, and rendered him legally "inadmissible" upon conviction, the stop-time rule cut off his continuous-residence count — making him categorically ineligible to apply for cancellation of removal at all.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Lawful permanent residents facing deportation can be categorically blocked from even asking an immigration judge for relief if they have qualifying criminal convictions from their first seven years in the country — regardless of whether those convictions were the government's stated reason for the deportation case. This can shut out long-time residents with strong family ties before a judge ever weighs the personal circumstances of their case.
What changes now
The Eleventh Circuit's ruling stands, and Barton faces deportation. The decision also resolves a circuit split: the Second, Third, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits had already read the statute the way the Court now confirms, while the Ninth Circuit had taken a narrower view that the disqualifying offense must also be the offense of removal. That narrower approach is now foreclosed. Congress may amend the cancellation-of-removal statute at any time, as the Court noted.
What this does not decide
The decision does not address whether the result is just or whether Congress should expand cancellation-of-removal eligibility. It also does not resolve a separate circuit split over whether the stop-time rule is triggered on the date an offense is committed or the later date a conviction (or admission) occurs, which the dissent notes was not briefed or disputed here.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argued that the immigration law's two-track structure — treating people seeking admission differently from those already admitted — controls the meaning of 'inadmissible' in the stop-time rule. Because Barton had already been lawfully admitted and was not seeking readmission, he could not legally be charged with inadmissibility at all; the government would need to show he committed a deportable offense, which it could not. The majority's reading, she argued, makes the stop-time rule's separate deportability clause meaningless surplusage and erases a protection Congress expressly built in for lawful permanent residents.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The cancellation-of-removal statute works like a recidivist sentencing law: just as a criminal court judge can consider a defendant's prior offenses beyond the crime of conviction, an immigration judge reviewing a request to cancel deportation can look beyond the specific offense that triggered removal proceedings and examine the noncitizen's full criminal history.
- The statute's 'stop-time rule' ends a lawful permanent resident's continuous-residence count when, during the first seven years, the person commits an offense listed in the immigration law's inadmissibility provisions (§1182(a)(2)) that 'renders the alien inadmissible.' The Court read 'inadmissible' as a legal status — established by being convicted of, or admitting to, a covered offense — not as requiring a formal immigration court ruling that the person was inadmissible.
- The Court found that Barton's 1996 aggravated assault offenses were 'crimes involving moral turpitude,' a broad category listed in §1182(a)(2). Because he committed them during his first seven years of residence and was later convicted of them in Georgia, he was rendered 'inadmissible' within the meaning of the stop-time rule — ending his continuous-residence clock and making him ineligible to seek cancellation.
- Barton argued that only offenses that actually triggered his deportation could bar cancellation of removal. The Court rejected this, noting that lawful permanent residents are typically deported under a different provision (§1227(a)(2)) — not §1182(a)(2). If Congress had wanted to limit the stop-time rule to offenses of removal, it would have referenced §1227(a)(2) as well. Barton's own counsel acknowledged at oral argument that the omission of §1227(a)(2) from the relevant clause was 'a little hard to explain' under his reading.
- Barton contended that the government's reading made part of the statute's text redundant. The Court acknowledged some overlap but said redundancy is common in statutory drafting and that a textual overlap in one part of a statute does not justify rewriting another part to restrict its plain meaning.