Immigration Court Notice Requirements to Get Supreme Court Look

The US Supreme Court will try to sort out the latest disagreement over the requirements for notices that immigrants lacking permanent legal status are due before they can be deported for not appearing in court.

The justices on Friday agreed to weigh an issue next term that’s split the lower appellate courts, generating different conclusions on whether a notice to appear must specify when removal proceedings are to be held. The issue of notification has been before the Supreme Court previously.

Salvadoran Moris Esmelis Campos-Chaves, who illegally entered the US in 2005 at Laredo, Texas, was ordered deported for failing to appear in immigration court. He says the notice to appear didn’t contain the date or time of his removal proceedings.

Campos-Chaves appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which dismissed his challenge to the immigration judge’s removal order. He later asked the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to reopen his case, but the appeals court denied his bid because it says he’d received a second notice.

In a similar case, the Ninth Circuit held those lacking permanent legal status must receive a notice to appear in a single document specifying the time and date of removal proceedings.

The justices in 2021 ruled against the government in Niz-Chavez v. Garland, holding that a notice to appear doesn’t sufficiently adhere to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act’s specifications if it’s delivered in installments rather than a single document.

The cases are Campos-Chaves v. Garland, U.S., No. 22-674, cert granted 6/30/23 and Garland v. Singh, U.S., 22-884, cert granted 6/30/23