US Supreme Court inclined to allow law against encouraging illegal immigration

WASHINGTON: Conservative US Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared inclined to uphold a federal law that made it a crime to encourage illegal immigration, signaling agreement with President Joe Biden’s administration that the measure does not violate constitutional free speech protections.

The justices heard arguments in the administration’s appeal of a lower court’s decision in a case from California to strike down the decades-old provision, part of a larger immigration statute, as overly broad because it may criminalize legitimate speech protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

The case involves a man named Helaman Hansen who deceived immigrants through a phony “adult adoption” program and was convicted in 2017 of violating that law and others.

In invalidating the law, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Hansen’s conviction for violating the provision, which bars inducing or encouraging noncitizens “to come to, enter or reside” in the United States illegally, including for financial gain. The 9th Circuit upheld Hansen’s convictions on mail and wire fraud charges.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its conservative justices appeared to agree with Biden’s administration that the law does not cover certain hypothetical scenarios that concerned the 9th Circuit, such as simply encouraging immigrants in the country illegally to remain in the United States or advising them about available social services.

The law targets only facilitating or soliciting unlawful conduct, not “general advocacy,” the administration argued.

Federal prosecutors accused Hansen of deceiving immigrants in the United States illegally by promising them between 2012 and 2016 that they could gain American citizenship through an “adult adoption” program operated by his Sacramento-based business, Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce.

The prosecution said Hansen persuaded at least 471 people to join his program, charging each of them up to $10,000 even though he “knew that the adult adoptions that he touted would not lead to US citizenship.” Hansen and his program collected more than $1.8 million through the scheme, authorities said.