A federal appeals court has denied a petition for review filed by a Nigerian citizen facing deportation over a prior passport fraud conviction, ruling that using a false passport is a crime involving moral turpitude.
In a decision filed on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld an order by the Board of Immigration Appeals that deemed Adebayo Ademola inadmissible to the United States.
“Adebayo Ademola petitions for review of an order by the Board of Immigration Appeals. That order deemed him inadmissible to the United States because of a prior conviction for false use of a passport. We deny the petition for review,” Circuit Judge Andrew S. Oldham wrote on behalf of a three-judge panel that included Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod and Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement.
Ademola, a Nigerian citizen who had obtained lawful permanent resident status in the United States, previously pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” using a “forged” or “counterfeit” Nigerian passport to open a bank account.
Several years later, federal authorities detained him when he returned from an international trip.
Under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, permanent residents returning from abroad can be required to seek admission if they have been convicted of a “crime involving moral turpitude.” The Department of Homeland Security charged Ademola with inadmissibility, and an immigration judge ordered him removed to Nigeria. The Board of Immigration Appeals later affirmed the ruling.
On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, Ademola argued that the false use of a passport does not qualify as a crime involving moral turpitude.
Evaluating the statute independently following recent Supreme Court precedent, the court determined that offenses requiring fraud or deceit inherently constitute crimes involving moral turpitude under the law.
Oldham wrote that the federal statute covers conduct that is “inherently fraudulent or deceitful,” noting that an individual who knowingly uses a false or void passport “is misusing the sovereign’s property and falsifying his Government-provided ‘introduction.'”
“Knowing use of an invalid passport is therefore categorically a crime involving moral turpitude,” the court concluded in denying Ademola’s petition.
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