A Second Circuit en banc panel on Thursday agreed with a Moroccan-born naturalized U.S. citizen who argued that his lawyer failed to warn him a conviction in connection with terrorism charges carried denaturalization and deportation risks, Courthouse News reports. In 2006, Abdulrahman Farhane pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiracy to launder money and lying to federal agents in connection with a federal terrorism sting following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Farhane’s family has maintained that his persecution was tied to an unjust round-up of Muslims following the attacks, but the Brooklyn resident served 11 years in prison nonetheless before securing an early release in 2017. Shortly after, he received a letter from the Justice Department that informed him the U.S. government planned to revoke his American citizenship.
After Farhane lost a bid to vacate his conviction and sentence under claims his lawyer failed to warn him of the deportation risks, the Second Circuit panel vacated the decision of a previous panel’s decision to deny his motion and remanded the case to a lower court for further consideration. The Second Circuit panel pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision known as Padilla v. Kentucky, in which the high court ruled that the Sixth Amendment requires criminal defense counsel to advise their client of a risk of deportation associated with a guilty plea. “The constitutional bottom line is clear: criminal defense counsel has a Sixth Amendment duty to advise a naturalized citizen client that entering a guilty plea exposes him to a risk of denaturalization and deportation,” U.S. Circuit Judge Susan L. Carney, a Barack Obama appointee, said in the decision Thursday. While the government argued that the threat of denaturalization is different from deportation, the panel said the two cannot be separated.