Lawful residents in the U.S. under a temporary work visa, permanent green card resident visa, or similar lawful immigration status must be aware of deportation risks associated with PFA orders. Call 888-535-3686 or use the online form now to retain the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team to ensure that your PFA order does not interfere with your immigrant visa lawful residency in the U.S. We can help you make your best Pennsylvania PFA order defense.
Immigrant Visa Advantages
Immigrant visas can be a great thing, giving the holder lawful status for U.S. residency. A work visa, although temporary, can be good for up to six years and may lead to an opportunity for permanent lawful residence in the U.S. A permanent resident card, form I-551, or green card grants permanent U.S. residency. A green card holder may remain in the U.S. indefinitely, potentially for the rest of the individual's life. In that sense, a green card holder is much like a U.S. citizen, even if the green card holder does not seek naturalization as a U.S. citizen. Green card holders can seek naturalization after five years of permanent U.S. residency, shortened to three years if married to a U.S. citizen. Again, immigrant visas can be a great thing.
Immigrant Visa Conditions
As advantageous as immigrant visas are, they are not entirely equivalent to U.S. citizenship for all rights and purposes. Immigrant visas are still like having one foot in the U.S. and one foot back home abroad. Even if the immigrant visa holder doesn't intend or desire to leave the U.S., federal immigration law may make the visa holder return abroad. In that sense, immigrant visas are conditional. Immigrant visas must be on their best behavior, so far as the law goes. If the visa holder violates one of the conditions of lawful residency in the U.S., then federal immigration officials may arrest and detain the visa holder for a deportation hearing to determine whether to oust the visa holder without immediate prospect for return.
PFA Order Grounds
So, here's the risk to an immigrant visa holder of a PFA order. To get a PFA order, Pennsylvania's Protection from Abuse Act Section 6106(a) requires that the plaintiff, meaning the putative victim, must plead the defendant's (the alleged perpetrator's) abuse. The Act's Section 6102(a) defines abuse broadly, more broadly than you may think. Abuse under the Act includes bodily injury, sexual assault, false imprisonment, stalking, and other injurious behaviors. The plaintiff seeking the PFA order must allege and prove at least one of these abuse grounds to get the PFA order.
The PFA Order Violation Risk
Now, just because an immigrant visa holder suffered a PFA order doesn't mean that the visa holder has violated the PFA order. Yet, the violation may come next. PFA orders can be extremely disruptive and restrictive. They can affect not only housing, transportation, and employment but also child custody and other family relationships. The individual subject to the PFA order can have a great temptation to cut corners, for instance, to reach out to the putative victim who got the PFA order for a little break. Bingo! That little text message or telephone call may violate the PFA order's no-contact provision. The individual subject to the PFA order may need to retrieve clothing or other personal effects from the restricted home. Bingo again! The individual has violated the PFA order's injunction against re-entering the home.
Continual and Incidental Risks
PFA orders are, in short, replete with violation risks. Well-intentioned, well-meaning, and responsible individuals subject to PFA orders continually end up finding themselves in the order's violation, simply while trying to go about their own business without any intention of threatening, abusing, or even coming into any contact with the putative victim who got the PFA order. Individuals subject to PFA orders find themselves innocently or carelessly violating the orders around their every term, including victim contacts, home or yard entries, workplace contacts, deprivation of common property, retrieval of personal property, and even alcohol, drug, or weapons violations, again having nothing to do with any intent to endanger or frighten the putative victim. Just living their own life, trying to get along.
The Link of PFA Orders to Immigrant Visas
Let's spell out the link between PFA orders and immigrant visa holder deportation risks. The immigrant visa holder who suffers a PFA order has apparently not been on the visa holder's best behavior, at least not if the court issued the PFA order on credible and convincing complaints of abuse. The issuance of the PFA order itself creates a deportation risk. As we'll discuss in the next section, a subsequent violation of the PFA order substantially increases that deportation risk. The PFA order's violation adds a presumed refusal to respect U.S. state laws and protective state laws. Put the two together: a court finding of abuse and a subsequent violation of the court's order protecting against abuse, and you've got a bad picture in a deportation arrest and hearing.
No Bright-Line Rules Here
Deportation, though, doesn't just happen automatically or presumptively with every court order or violation of a court order. Legal standards are not typically that automatic, white and black, clear line, or simple. They can't be that clear and simple because life and circumstances are infinitely complex. As soon as you made one bright-line rule, you'd have to change it for the next exception or special circumstance to make the rule reasonably fair and logical in all cases rather than arbitrary and capricious in certain cases. So, instead, the federal deportation statute 8 USC Section 1227 articulates several classes of broadly deportable offenses, leaving it to the immigration judge to determine whether to deport any specific visa holder under any specific circumstance after a deportation hearing covering the peculiar facts and circumstances. Deportation occurs largely on a case-by-case basis.
Classes of Deportable Offenses
The federal deportation statute 8 USC Section 1227 includes several classes of deportable offenses obviously having nothing to do with PFA orders, at least in ordinary PFA cases. Those classes include drug convictions, human trafficking, immigrant smuggling, obtaining a visa by marriage fraud, and terrorist activities, among several others. However, other deportable offense classes could arguably have something to do with the circumstances of a PFA order. Those arguably relevant deportable offense classes include crimes of moral turpitude, aggravated felonies, and other miscellaneous crimes. So, in general, one would want to be careful that one's PFA order circumstances don't look so bad or get so bad as to begin to approach some of these arguably relevant deportable offense classes. No aggravated assault, for instance, or that felony crime would be a deportable offense.
The Specific PFA Order Deportation Ground
Yet the federal deportable offense statute 8 USC Section 1227 has one more deportable offense class that is, unfortunately for any visa holder subject to a PFA order, right on point. Section 1227 titles that right-on-point deportable offense class “violators of protection orders.” There it is. If you violate your PFA order, and a PFA order is indeed clearly a protection order, then immigration officials would have grounds to arrest for deportation, and an immigration judge would have grounds to deport after a hearing deciding whether deportation was appropriate under the specific PFA order and PFA order violation circumstances. The details of the statute under the “violators of protection orders” state in the relevant part that the immigration judge may deport:
“[a]ny alien who ... is ... under a protection order ... and whom the court determines has engaged in conduct that violates the ... protection order ... involv[ing] ... credible threats of violence, repeated harassment, or bodily injury to the person or persons for whom the protection order was issued is deportable.”
The Deportation Risk Assessed
So yes, you could suffer deportation for violating a PFA order, depending on the circumstances, and after deportation, arrest, and immigration hearing. Yet the deportation risk really depends on applying the just-quoted deportation ground to your specific circumstances. If one parses the above-quoted ground closely and thinks about common PFA order violation circumstances, one might come up with this list of factors guiding whether you would, in fact, suffer deportation under Section 1227's “violators of protection orders” class in your particular case:
- whether you made “credible threats of violence” toward the putative victim who obtained the PFA order, when you violated the PFA order, such as yelling in the victim's presence that you were about to shoot, strike, or injure the victim, with the apparent present ability to do so;
- whether you alternatively engaged in “repeated harassment” toward the putative victim who obtained the PFA order when you violated the PFA order, such as continuous or frequent stalking surveilling, calling, texting, or personal visits at the restricted home or a restricted workplace;
- whether you alternatively caused “bodily injury” to the putative victim who obtained the PFA order when you violated the order, such as bruises, wounds, lacerations, or broken bones by physical contact or gunshot, or poisoning by substances; or
- whether you did any of the above acts to another person protected under the PFA order.
PFA Order Violations, Not Deportable Offenses
The above analysis may seem close and technical, but that is how law often proceeds with these sorts of things. To make the analysis clearer and a little simpler, consider it the other way around. Things that would not likely qualify as deportable actions under Section 1227's “violators of protection orders” class, in your particular case:
- as to making “credible threats of violence” toward the putative victim who obtained the PFA order, when you violated the PFA order, you instead made no threats or only made silly or joking or impossible threats that carried no imminent risk of harm or created no fear of imminent risk of harm;
- as to engaging in “repeated harassment” toward the putative victim who obtained the PFA order, when you violated the PFA order, you only harassed the victim once, not repeatedly;
- as to causing “bodily injury” to the putative victim who obtained the PFA order, when you violated the order, you only spoke to or came into contact with the putative victim without causing bodily injury.
And, of course, if you did any of the violent, threatening, or injuring things to which Section 1227 refers but only did those things to someone other than the PFA order protected, then you would not have committed a deportable offense.
What Our Attorneys Can Do About Your Risk
So, that's a lot of information. But your big question may simply be, what can we do about your deportation risk? Our PFA attorneys have abundant skill and experience in challenging PFA orders. We may be able to remove your PFA order after a review hearing by presenting your evidence showing that you did not commit the statutorily required abuse necessary to justify the court's PFA order. After our defense presentation, the judge may find that the judge issued them without grounds, thus dismissing the PFA order as improvidently granted. We may alternatively be able to convince the judge to limit the order so that you can move about more freely with a smaller risk of inadvertent violations. We may also be able to show at the hearing on the PFA order's alleged violation that you did not, in fact, violate the order.
Pennsylvania PFA Defense Available
If you hold an immigrant visa and face a PFA order, call 888-535-3686 or use the online form now to retain the LLF Law Firm Criminal Defense Team to defend and address your PFA rights. Do not fall into the trap of a PFA order violation and face the risk of deportation and permanent U.S. removal. You have far too much at stake. Get our skilled and experienced defense representation.
