The duty to advise a non-citizen client before a plea, the conviction definition that counts even when a state court says otherwise, the aggravated felony categories and how a sentence length triggers them, crimes involving moral turpitude and the petty offense exception, controlled substance grounds and the single marijuana exception, vacating a conviction for a legal defect rather than for hardship, and bond while a case is pending.
A later adjudicator deciding what an offense involved may consult the charging instrument, a written plea agreement, the transcript of a plea colloquy, the judgment, and in a tried case the jury instructions and verdict form. Police reports, arrest affidavits and presentence narratives sit outside that set. A stipulated factual basis that incorporates an investigative document moves it inside, which is the single most common way a narrow plea record is lost.
The immigration statute borrows its crime of violence definition from the federal criminal code. The residual half of that definition, which asked whether an offense carried a substantial risk that force would be used, was held unconstitutionally vague as incorporated into the immigration provision. What survives requires an element of the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force, read as force capable of causing physical pain or injury.
The domestic violence ground has four limbs. Three require a conviction: a crime of violence committed against a person in a defined domestic relationship, a crime of stalking, and a crime of child abuse, neglect or abandonment. The fourth requires only a court's determination that the client violated the part of a protection order protecting against credible threats of violence, repeated harassment or bodily injury, which a civil contempt finding can supply.
Immigration counsel cannot say what a disposition does without the charging instrument, the precise offer, the proposed factual basis and the sentence arithmetic. Defense counsel cannot weigh an offer without the client's status, entry history, prior dispositions and any pending application. The transfer has to run both ways and has to close before the plea date, because a disposition already entered narrows every remaining option to a challenge.
An immigration detainer is a request addressed to a custodian, not an order addressed to a defendant, and jurisdictions have divided on whether to honor one at all. Its practical effect on the criminal case is severe regardless: the defendant sits in another agency's custody, transport depends on interagency arrangement rather than judicial order, absences appear on the record as failures to appear, and warrants issue against a person who is already detained.
A conviction for purchasing, selling, offering for sale, exchanging, using, owning, possessing or carrying a firearm or destructive device in violation of any law is a ground of deportability. There is no petty offense exception, no minimum sentence and no requirement that the offense be a felony. Because the ground turns on the object named in the statute of conviction, a charge that does not identify a firearm generally does not reach it.
A lawful permanent resident returning from abroad is ordinarily not regarded as seeking admission, but a resident who has committed an offense in the criminal inadmissibility categories loses that treatment and is examined as an applicant. Because the inadmissibility list is not identical to the deportability list, a conviction that created no removal exposure at home can stop the same client on re-entry, which makes advice about travel part of the criminal representation.
The immigration statute counts the period of incarceration or confinement ordered by the court, and it says expressly that the count includes any part of the term whose imposition or execution was suspended. Time actually served is irrelevant, and so is early release. A sentence therefore falls below the one-year line only if the total ordered on the count, suspended portion included, is less than a year, and each count is measured separately rather than aggregated.
Deferred prosecution suspends the case before any plea, so completion leaves nothing for the federal definition of conviction to attach to. Deferred adjudication takes a plea or a signed admission first and withholds judgment, which satisfies the definition the moment the court imposes conditions. The dismissal entered on completion does not undo it. In a controlled substance case the difference is decisive, because that ground carries no exception for a short sentence.
Relief granted because a defendant completed probation, stayed out of trouble, or deserved a fresh start does not disturb the federal definition of conviction. Only an order resting on a legal or constitutional defect in the original proceeding removes the judgment for immigration purposes. Sealing changes who can see the record; it does not change what the record is, and a certified disposition can still be produced.
Naturalization requires good moral character during the statutory period preceding the application and continuing until admission to citizenship, so conduct after filing is inside the period. Regulation lists conditional bars for acts within it, including a turpitude conviction outside the petty offense exception, a controlled substance violation, confinement of one hundred eighty days or more, and false testimony. An arrest must be disclosed at interview whether or not it produced a charge.
Counsel representing a non-citizen must advise on the immigration consequence of a contemplated plea before it is entered. Where the removal ground is clear on the face of the statute, the advice must say so plainly; where the category is contested, counsel must say that removal is a real risk. A missing or wrong warning supports a later ineffective assistance claim only if the client can show a different choice was rational.
