Cite as: 533 U. S. 289 (2001)
Scalia, J., dissenting
tiorari. In contrast, noncriminal aliens seeking to challenge their removal orders—for example, those charged with having been inadmissible at the time of entry, with having failed to maintain their nonimmigrant status, with having procured a visa through a marriage that was not bona fide, or with having become, within five years after the date of entry, a public charge, see 8 U. S. C. §§ 1227(a)(1)(A), (a)(1)(C), (a)(1)(G), (a)(5) (1994 ed., Supp. V)—will still presumably be required to proceed directly to the court of appeals by way of petition for review, under the restrictive modified Hobbs Act review provisions set forth in § 1252(a)(1), including the 30-day filing deadline, see § 1252(b)(1). In fact, prior to the enactment of IIRIRA, criminal aliens also had to follow this procedure for immediate modified Hobbs Act review in the court of appeals. See 8 U. S. C. § 1105a(a) (1994 ed.). The Court has therefore succeeded in perverting a statutory scheme designed to expedite the removal of criminal aliens into one that now affords them more opportunities for (and layers of) judicial review (and hence more opportunities for delay) than are afforded non-criminal aliens—and more than were afforded criminal aliens prior to the enactment of IIRIRA.4 This outcome speaks for itself; no Congress ever imagined it.
To excuse the violence it does to the statutory text, the Court invokes the doctrine of constitutional doubt, which it asserts is raised by the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. This uses one distortion to justify another, transmogrifying a doctrine designed to maintain "a just re-4 The Court disputes this conclusion by observing that "the scope of review on habeas is considerably more limited than on APA-style review," ante, at 314, n. 38 (a statement, by the way, that confirms our contention that habeas is, along with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), one form of judicial review). It is more limited, to be sure—but not "considerably more limited" in any respect that would disprove the fact that criminal aliens are much better off than others. In all the many cases that (like the present one) involve "question[s] of law," ibid., the Court's statutory misconstruction gives criminal aliens a preferred position.
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