08-1889 Samirah v. Holder

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Immigration
Advance parole; revocation

Where a grant of advanced parole is later revoked, the alien must be permitted to reenter the United States for the purpose of reacquiring lawful resident status.

“We do not retract our earlier statement, based on our previous decision, that the immigration statute makes the grant of advance parole discretionary, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A), and its revocation likewise when it says that ‘when the purposes of such parole shall, in the opinion of the Attorney General, have been served the alien shall forthwith return or be returned to the custody from which he was paroled and thereafter his case shall continue to be dealt with in the same manner as that of any other applicant for admission to the United States.’ Id.; see Samirah v. O’Connell, supra, 335 F.3d at 548-49; Hassan v. Chertoff, 593 F.3d 785, 789-90 (9th Cir. 2010); cf. Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 600 (1988). But it isn’t true that if we can order the Attorney General to grant parole, the decision whether to grant or deny or revoke parole is no longer in his discretion. He has limited his discretion by promulgating the regulation that requires that upon termination of advance parole the parolee be restored to his pre-parole status, and there is no suggestion that the Attorney General cannot limit his own discretion in this way-it would actually curtail his discretionary authority if he could not limit his discretion.”

Affirmed in part.

08-1889 Samirah v. Holder

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Moran, J., Posner, J.

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