Cite as: 525 U. S. 471 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
The Attorney General would have us avoid the horns of this dilemma by interpreting § 1252(g)'s phrase "[e]xcept as provided in this section" to mean "except as provided in § 1105a." Because § 1105a authorizes review of only final orders, respondents must, she says, wait until their administrative proceedings come to a close and then seek review in a court of appeals. (For reasons mentioned above, the Attorney General of course rejects the Ninth Circuit's position in AADC I that application of § 1105a would leave respondents without a judicial forum because evidence of selective prosecution cannot be introduced into the administrative record.) The obvious difficulty with the Attorney General's interpretation is that it is impossible to understand how the qualifier in § 1252(g), "[e]xcept as provided in this section" (emphasis added), can possibly mean "except as provided in § 1105a." And indeed the Attorney General makes no attempt to explain how this can be, except to observe that what she calls a "literal application" of the statute "would create an anomalous result." Brief for Petitioners 30, n. 15.
Respondents note this deficiency, but offer an equally implausible means of avoiding the dilemma. Section 309(c)(3) allows the Attorney General to terminate pending deportation proceedings and reinitiate them under § 1252.6 They argue that § 1252(g) applies only to those pending cases in which the Attorney General has made that election. That way, they claim, the phrase "[e]xcept as provided in this section" can, without producing an anomalous result, be allowed to refer (as it says) to all the rest of § 1252. But this approach collides head-on with § 306(c)'s prescription that § 1252(g) shall apply "without limitation to claims arising from all past, pending, or future exclusion, deportation, or removal proceedings." See note following 8 U. S. C. § 1252 (1994 ed., Supp. III) (emphasis added). (Respondents argue
6 It is unclear why the Attorney General has not exercised this option in this case. Respondents have taken the position that the District Court's injunction prevents her from doing so. Brief for Respondents 41, n. 38.
479
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