134
Opinion of the Court
legislation, its laborious adaptation of the Administrative Procedure Act to the deportation process, the specific points at which deviations from the Administrative Procedure Act were made, the recognition in the legislative history of this adaptive technique and of the particular deviations, and the direction in the statute that the methods therein prescribed shall be the sole and exclusive procedure for deportation proceedings." 349 U. S., at 310.
Applying our precedent in Marcello, it is clear that Ardestani's deportation proceeding was not subject to the APA and thus not governed by the provisions of § 554. It is immaterial that the Attorney General in 1983 promulgated regulations that conform deportation hearings more closely to the procedures required for formal adjudication under the APA. 48 Fed. Reg. 8038-8040 (1983). Marcello does not hold simply that deportation proceedings are subject to the APA except for specific deviations sanctioned by the INA. Rather, Marcello rests in large part on the statute's prescription that the INA "shall be the sole and exclusive procedure for determining the deportability of an alien under this section." INA, § 242(b) (codified at 8 U. S. C. § 1252(b)) (emphasis added); Marcello, supra, at 309. Neither the analysis nor the decision in Marcello leaves open the possibility that the APA should displace the INA in the event that the regulations governing immigration proceedings become functionally equivalent to the procedures mandated for adjudications governed by § 554.
B
Ardestani's principal argument is that, for the purposes of the EAJA, deportation proceedings fall "under section 554" because, like the adjudications described in § 554(a), they are "required by statute to be determined on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing." She thus contends that the phrase "under section 554" encompasses all adjudications "as defined in" § 554(a), even if they are not governed by the procedural provisions established in the remainder of that
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