Cite as: 525 U. S. 471 (1999)
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
II
The petition for certiorari asked this Court to review the merits of respondents' selective enforcement objection, but we declined to do so, granting certiorari on the jurisdictional question only. See Pet. for Cert. I, 20-30; 524 U. S. 903 (1998). We thus lack full briefing on respondents' selective enforcement plea and on the viability of such objections generally. I would therefore leave the question an open one. I note, however, that there is more to "the other side of the ledger," ante, at 491, than the Court allows.
It is well settled that "[f]reedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country." Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, 148 (1945). Under our selective prosecution doctrine, "the decision to prosecute may not be deliberately based upon an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification, including the exercise of protected statutory and constitutional rights." Wayte v. United States, 470 U. S. 598, 608 (1985) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). I am not persuaded that selective enforcement of deportation laws should be exempt from that prescription. If the Government decides to deport an alien "for reasons forbidden by the Constitution," United States v. Armstrong, 517 U. S. 456, 463 (1996), it does not seem to me that redress for the constitutional violation should turn on the gravity of the governmental sanction. Deportation, in any event, is a grave sanction. As this Court has long recognized, "[t]hat deportation is a penalty— at times a most serious one—cannot be doubted." Bridges, 326 U. S., at 154; see also ibid. (Deportation places "the liberations, I think that is a claim that would properly be before the court of appeals."
Court: "So is that the Government's position, that we may rely on that representation that you have just made about the legal position that the Government would take in those circumstances?"
Counsel for petitioners: "That is correct." Tr. of Oral Arg. 5-6.
497
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