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Opinion of the Court
at 270, to hold that IIRIRA's subsequent restrictions deprive them of any possibility of such relief.52
The INS argues that deportation proceedings (and the Attorney General's discretionary power to grant relief from deportation) are "inherently prospective" and that, as a result, application of the law of deportation can never have a retroactive effect. Such categorical arguments are not particularly helpful in undertaking Landgraf's common-sense, functional retroactivity analysis. See Martin, 527 U. S., at 359. Moreover, although we have characterized deportation as "look[ing] prospectively to the respondent's right to remain in this country in the future," INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U. S. 1032, 1038 (1984), we have done so in order to reject the argument that deportation is punishment for past behavior and that deportation proceedings are therefore subject to the "various protections that apply in the context of a criminal trial." Ibid. As our cases make clear, the presumption against retroactivity applies far beyond the confines of the criminal law. See Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 272. And our mere statement that deportation is not punishment for past crimes does not mean that we cannot consider an alien's reasonable reliance on the continued availability of discretionary relief from deportation when deciding whether the elimination of such relief has a retroactive effect.53
52 The significance of that reliance is obvious to those who have participated in the exercise of the discretion that was previously available to delegates of the Attorney General under § 212(c). See In re Soriano, 16 BIA Immig. Rptr. B1-227, B1-238 to B1-239 (1996) (Rosenberg, Board Member, concurring and dissenting) ("I find compelling policy and practical reasons to go beyond such a limited interpretation as the one the majority proposes in this case. All of these people, and no doubt many others, had settled expectations to which they conformed their conduct").
53 We are equally unconvinced by the INS' comparison of the elimination of § 212(c) relief for people like St. Cyr with the Clayton Act's elimination of federal courts' power to enjoin peaceful labor actions. In American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U. S. 184 (1921), and Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, 464 (1921),
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