SUPREME COURT Published March 28, 2023 8:17am EDT
Immigration law faces First Amendment challenge brought before Supreme Court
Justices weigh whether immigration advice could risk prosecution under law making it a crime to 'encourage and induce' illegal immigrants to stay in US
Danielle Wallace By Danielle Wallace | Fox News
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The Supreme Court on Monday debated whether a federal law that makes it a crime to "encourage" or "induce" an illegal immigrant to remain in the U.S. sweeps up amounts of speech that is protected by the First Amendment, and in being too broad, could jeopardize charitable groups that feed the hungry or a family’s plan to have a grandmother continue living with them.
At the center of the case is defendant Helaman Hansen, who, in operating an organization called Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce, conned 471 immigrants who had overstayed their visas into paying between $550 and $10,000 under the false pretense that they could obtain U.S. citizenship through adult adoption.
Hansen was convicted in 2017 on 15 counts of mail and wire fraud for defrauding those people out of a total $1.8 million and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, NPR reported.
However, the jury also convicted him on two counts encouraging or inducing illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found the corresponding decades-old law "overbroad and unconstitutional," the government appealed, bringing the matter before the Supreme Court, The Washington Post reported.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/immigration-law-faces-first-amendment-challenge-brought-supreme-court
