The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has determined that a New Jersey statute criminalizing possession of a dangerous substance is divisible with respect to the identity of the controlled substance. The agency found several authoritative state law decisions that didn’t seemingly support its conclusion, but instead of concluding that state law does not consider the identity of the substance as an element, the BIA (in a well-choreographed tap dance) decided the decisions were so old as to not properly use the terms “means” and “element” as they are understood today. All in all, the decision reads as a fairly desperate attempt by the BIA to avoid the possibility that people convicted of drug possession in New Jersey won’t be deportable.
In the BIA’s defense, their analysis of the structure of the statute seems more consistent with case law, and less like an analysis focused on outcome only.
The full text of Matter of Laguerre can be found here: