The Supreme Court was divided in hearing arguments on a federal law that makes it a crime to encourage or induce an immigrant to come to or remain in the U.S. Plaintiffs argue that the law is too broad and may chill speech, an argument that some justices found wanting as the Deputy Solicitor General indicated that there was no history of prosecuting family members encouraging an immigrant to stay in the U.S. (SCOTUSblog, March 28, 2023, by Amanda Shanor)
The case, United Sates v. Hansen, concerned Helman Hansen, arrested for a fraudulent “adult adoption” program that promised immigrants with a phony path to citizenship. The concern is that the “encouragement provision” violates the First Amendment, “… the encouragement provision doesn’t appear to require that the speaker specifically intend that a listener go on to commit an immigration violation. It isn’t hard to imagine valuable speech — from truthful legal advice to accurate reporting about migration routes — that could foreseeably encourage violations of immigration law even if the speaker doesn’t intend that result. And as the Supreme Court has already explained, ‘The mere tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for banning it.'” (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, March 27, 2023, by Grayson Clary)
Justice Brett Kananaugh was also assured that the government had no interest in using the law to prosecute charitable organizations providing food and shelter for immigrants. The justices, though, did not think that Hansen’s First Amendment rights were abridged as he was committing a scam. (The New York Times, March 27, 2023, by Adam Liptak)