ON FRIDAY, The U.S. Supreme Court denied, 7-2, a challenge to a long-standing immigration law that prohibits the encouragement or inducement of an illegal alien to enter or reside in the country. The case is U.S. v. Hansen. The challenge before the Court was that the word “encouraged” in the statute was overly broad and could be unconstitutionally be applied in situations where, for example, a family member “encouraged” an illegal relative to come, or an advocate wrote in favor of illegal migration. Predictably, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
To be sure, the facts in the case were extreme and cases like that can result in legal extremes. Here, a man located in Sacramento, Helaman Hansen, charged almost 500 illegal aliens, with no documentation, up to $10,000 to help them become citizens—something he couldn’t possibly do legally. All told, he took in almost $2 million from his scheme. He was charged with 15 counts of fraud and two counts of encouraging and inducing unlawful immigration “for private financial gain,” and was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Court didn’t buy it. Writing for the Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said there was no evidence the law was being used in the manner complained of, and the “string of hypotheticals…failed to identify a single prosecution for ostensibly protected expression in the 70 years since Congress enacted [that specific] clause.” Instead, she said it was being used narrowly to prohibit “criminal solicitation” of illegal immigration who make promises to get illegals into the country for a fee.
Statutes, of course, can be nullified when, for example, they are overly broad, and there is good reason for that. Here, however, Barrett seems to suggest the law is simply for illegal aliens’ own protection, rather than to protect the country and its taxpayers from illegal entry of unauthorized persons and those that encourage them. I haven’t read the opinion yet as it isn’t available, but if this is accurate, while I’d agree with the outcome, I don’t agree with the rationale for the holding.
A better ruling would be to interpret the statute as a proscription against aiding and abetting a federal crime (period), clarifying it is not a proscription against lawful protected First Amendment speech or free press. The law may protect illegals, but it should, in the first instance, protect Americans from the effects of the underlying illegal act.
sua sponte 