Page:Pugin v. Garland.pdf/33

Rh the phrase “relating to” covers all offenses “that have ‘a connection with’ obstruction of justice,”. That reading is a direct result of the Court’s failure to consider statutory text and context when interpreting “relating to.” After all, “in isolation” that phrase is endlessly expansive because, absent a statute-specific “limiting principle,” relations “stop nowhere.” Maracich v. Spears, 570 U. S. 48, 59–60 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, one look at statutory text and context confirms that “relating to” must have a narrower meaning.

The text of the INA “makes [non-U. S. citizens]aliens [sic] removable based on the nature of their convictions, not based on their actual conduct.” Esquivel-Quintana, 581 U. S., at 389. This explains why, when applying §1101(a)(43)(S), courts use the categorical approach, which compares the elements of the statute of conviction to the generic offense. Without a delineated generic offense, however, this comparison falters. The Court’s nebulous reading of “relating to obstruction of justice, perjury or subornation of perjury, or bribery of a witness,” §1101(a)(43)(S) (emphasis added), fails to grapple with this reality. Rather than ask whether a conviction is a categorical match for, say, generic “perjury,” the majority seems to suggest courts should ask if the conviction has “a connection with” generic perjury. If that is what the majority intends, it is not clear what that question means or how courts should go about answering it.

In contrast, no such problem arises if “an offense relating to … perjury” or “an offense relating to obstruction of justice” is understood narrowly to mean simply “an offense qualifying as generic perjury” or “an offense qualifying as generic obstruction of justice.” The broader statutory context confirms this reading. Again and again, §1101(a)(43) uses the phrase “relating to” in descriptive parentheticals to introduce an ordinary language description of other aggravated felonies. For example, to identify the money laundering offenses in 18 U. S. C. §1956, the INA refers to “an