HERNANDEZ-PONCE

Citations

• 19 I. & N. Dec. 613

Syllabus

HERNANDEZ-PONCE, , 19 I&N Dec. 613 (BIA 1988) ID 3055 (PDF) (1) The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-570, 100 Stat. 3207, amended sections 241(a)(11) and 212(a)(23) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1251(a)(11) and 1182(a)(23) (1982), and significantly broadened the types of drug offenses which render an alien deportable or excludable. (2) Section 241(a)(11) of the Act, which previously rendered deportable only those aliens convicted of illicit possession of or traffic in narcotic drugs or marihuana, now refers to \any law or regulation\ relating to a controlled substance and therefore, the immigration judge properly found deportable an alien twice convicted of the crime of use and being under the influence of phencyclidine (\PCP\), a controlled substance. (3) The Board's construction of the former statute, which distinguished a conviction for unlawful use of a proscribed drug from a conviction for its unlawful possession, was based on the clearly different language of the former statute and is clearly incompatible with the plain meaning of the amended statute. Matter of Sum, 13 I&N Dec. 569 (BIA 1970), superseded.