Several months ago, a reporter from a national outlet called to talk about Chevron deference in immigration. Apparently, immigration lawyers were (quietly) thrilled that Chevron deference was on the chopping block. That decision requires the Board of Immigration Appeals to defer to the executive branch when interpreting an "ambiguous" provision of the immigration laws. Most immigration lawyers are left of center, and they did not dare file an amicus brief on this issue in Loper Bright, but I've heard they were eagerly looking forward to the Court's decision. And such has come to pass.
Indeed, Justice Gorsuch cites immigration law as a justification to overrule Chevron.
In another case, one which I heard as a court of appeals judge, De Niz Robles v. Lynch, 803 F. 3d 1165 (CA10 2015), the Board of Immigration Appeals invoked Chevron to overrule a judicial precedent on which many immigrants had relied, see In re Briones, 24 I. & N. Dec. 355, 370 (BIA 2007) (purporting to overrule Padilla–Caldera v. Gonzales, 426 F. 3d 1294 (CA10 2005)). The agency then sought to apply its new interpretation retroactively to punish those immigrants—including Alfonzo De Niz Robles, who had relied on that judicial precedent as authority to remain in this country with his U. S. wife and four children. See 803 F. 3d, at 1168–1169. Our court ruled that this retrospective application of the BIA's new interpretation of the law violated Mr. De Niz Robles's due process rights. Id., at 1172. But as a lower court, we could treat only the symptom, not the disease. So Chevron permitted the agency going forward to overrule a judicial decision about the best reading of the law with its own different "reasonable" one and in that way deny relief to countless future immigrants.
