The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 on June 26 that a 30-day deadline for contesting deportation orders starts when administrative removal proceedings conclude, not when the illegal immigrant is notified.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion in Riley v. Bondi.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion in full.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion. It was joined in full by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The nation’s highest court held that a rule barring review for failing to file an appeal within a 30-day window under a federal law was “jurisdictional”—meaning it must be strictly followed—and that claims that could have been raised in the 30-day period may not be reviewed by the courts.
Pierre Riley, a Jamaican citizen, came to the United States on a tourist visa in 1995 that allowed him to remain in the country for six months. He overstayed his visa and joined a drug trafficking gang. In 2008, he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, along with possessing a firearm while committing a drug-trafficking crime. He received a sentence of 25 years in prison but was released in 2021, the majority opinion said.
Soon after his release, immigration officials took him into custody and moved to deport him. Because he was convicted of an aggravated felony, the case was supposed to be fast-tracked according to a 1996 federal law. Under that law, if an immigration officer finds that an “alien was convicted of an aggravated felony,” the officer files a “Notice of Intent” to deport. The would-be deportee may challenge the notice in writing within 10 days after it is issued.
If the immigration officer determines the alien is removable, or if the alien decides not to challenge his removability, the officer files a final administrative review order (FARO) specifying which country the person is to be deported to. The alien may then seek review from a court, the majority opinion said.
Riley did not dispute his aggravated felony convictions, and on Jan. 26, 2021, the Department of Homeland Security filed a FARO indicating Riley should be removed to Jamaica. Riley argued under the Convention Against Torture that he should not be sent to Jamaica because he feared that a powerful drug kingpin there would likely kill him.
An immigration official rejected Riley’s claim that he had a reasonable fear of persecution, but an immigration judge disagreed and sent the case to a so-called withholding-only proceeding at which the only issue was whether the alien may be deported to his home country, according to the majority opinion.
At that proceeding, the immigration judge accepted Riley’s claim as credible and blocked deportation to Jamaica under the Convention. The Department of Homeland Security appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which determined that the claim was “not supported by sufficient objective evidence.” The board vacated the immigration judge’s decision and allowed enforcement of the FARO.
Three days later, Riley filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, but the court threw the appeal out, saying it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The court found that the final order of removal was the FARO dated Jan. 26, 2021, not the later BIA order that denied relief under the Convention. This meant Riley filed the petition late, and because the appeals court believed the deadline was “jurisdictional,” it dismissed the appeal, the majority opinion said.
The Supreme Court concluded that the BIA order that declined to defer removal is not a FARO, so Riley could not seek relief from a court.
The court vacated the decision of the Fourth Circuit and sent the case back to that court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.
In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor wrote that the question before the Supreme Court was when Riley ought to have sought judicial review of the BIA order.
The question is whether the petition was due 30 days after the government notified Riley he was going to be removed—”well over a year before the Board issued the order that Riley sought to challenge”—or due 30 days after the order was issued that denied his claim for deferred removal, she wrote.
“The answer is clear: One should not be required to appeal an order before it exists,” Sotomayor wrote.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 26, 2025, in The Epoch Times.