The Attorney General - in a decision that I sincerely hope will not withstand the scrutiny of any federal judge reviewing it - has determined that a statute of conviction does not need to categorically match the definition of any single type of aggravated felony, so long as all of the conduct criminalized matches the generic definition of one of the subsets of aggravated felonies.
“Because New York law defines larceny to include both a taking of property without consent and one where consent was fraudulently obtained, the respondent argued that the statute of conviction is not a categorical match to either aggravated-felony theft or aggravated-felony fraud. Even if the New York offense must constitute either theft or fraud, she contended, the immigration judge could not determine using the categorical approach the one particular aggravated felony that she had committed. Therefore, she argued, her larceny conviction could not support her removal.”
The Attorney General disagreed. “None of the cases holds that a court is required to compare the alien’s underlying crime to one, and only one, generic offense at a time.”
Finally, the Attorney General found that he permissibly apply this new analysis retroactively,
The full text of Matter of Reyes can be found here: