Juan Esquivel-Quintana is a citizen of Mexico who has lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident since he was 12 years old. He was not an incel; he was a normie. See, at the age of 20, Quintana had sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend.
That was illegal under California law: when it comes to statutory rape, California law is much stricter than that of most other states. Cal. Penal Code Ann. §261.5 sets the age of consent at 18, with a close-in-age exemption of only three years. Only seven of the 50 states set the age of consent at 18; the other states set it at 16 or 17.
So Quintana was arrested, convicted, and spent a few weeks in a county jail. Afterwards, he moved to Michigan for a fresh start. But in 2013, ICE commenced deportation proceedings. Federal immigration law allows the U.S. government to deport any and all aliens who have been convicted of an "aggravated felony", whether in state or federal court. Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the "sexual abuse of a minor" is an "aggravated felony". See 8 U.S.C. §1101(43)(A). If Quintana were deported, he would have been permanently banned from the United States.
Quintana's lawyers argued that statutory rape—at least in the particular circumstances of his case—was not an "aggravated felony". They pointed out that Quintana's conduct was in fact legal in most states and under federal criminal law, so their client wasn't deserving of deportation. But the Board of Immigration Appeals disagreed, and on appeal, the Sixth Circuit applied Chevron deference and held that Quintana was eligible for deportation.
So Quintana, whose case was now taken by Stanford Law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The central question was this: Did a conviction of statutory rape under California law constitute "sexual abuse of a minor" for the purposes of federal immigration law?
And exactly five years ago, on May 30th, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously answered no. In a defeat for the Trump administration, Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the Court would have to consider not the specific circumstances of a criminal conviction, but whether the conduct proscribed by statute, at minimum, fits within the generic federal definition of a corresponding aggravated felony.
Thomas wrote that
Applying his originalist twist on statutory interpretation, because a significant majority of states had set the age of consent at 16 back when the Act was passed in 1996, Thomas concluded that Quintana was not eligible for removal from the United States on the basis of his statutory rape conviction in California. Not only that, but Thomas held that the generic federal definition of "sexual abuse of a minor" did not apply to convictions of statutory rape in states where the age of consent was higher than 16.
You can read the full decision of Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions, 137 S. Ct. 1562. (2017), here.
@Wizard32 @Edmund_Kemper @RoastieBeef
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