Judge Wants High Court to Rethink ‘Absurd’ Citizenship Precedent

After “reluctantly” agreeing to vacate deportation orders for a convicted child sexual predator, Sixth Circuit Judge Amul R. Thapar said Wednesday that he wants the US Supreme Court to reconsider its controlling precedent that compelled that result.

The high court’s 1964 holding in Costello v. Immigr. & Naturalization Serv. “has resulted in a series of disturbing anomalies that no rational Congress could have intended,” Thapar said in a concurring US Court of Appeal for the Sixth Circuit opinion.

The Sixth Circuit held in a separate opinion that an immigration court’s order of removal must be vacated, granting Elfido Gonzalez Castillo’s ...