Immigration Article: The Meaning of the End of Chevron for Immigration Removal Adjudications by Kevin R. Johnson

Immigration Article: The Meaning of the End of Chevron for Immigration Removal Adjudications by Kevin R. Johnson, Forthcoming (December 2025) Georgetown Immigration Law Journal

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court in 2024 over the foundational administrative law decision of Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Since 1984, Chevron had required courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous provisions of statutes that they administer. Courts again have the final say on the meaning of the law administered by agencies.

Liberal commentators lament the end of Chevron deference. However, Chevron was no friend to noncitizens. Deference generally meant that courts upheld the U.S. administrative agencies’ interpretation of the immigration statute and agency orders of removal of noncitizens from the United States.
Removal adjudications, which determine whether noncitizens may live in the United States, were not at issue in Chevron, a technical environmental law case involving a pollution emissions rule. Removal adjudications are quite different from the cost/benefit analysis that factors into rules and regulations designed to protect the environment. Through an immigration bureaucracy with the power to remove noncitizens from the United States or gant them relief from removal, such as asylum, attorneys for the U.S. government pursue the removal of noncitizens and attempt to restrict relief from removal provided by the immigration statute passed by Congress. Agencies in the Executive Branch decide those matters. Chevron deference in that bureaucratic landscape for years had adverse consequences for noncitizens, the majority of who are people of color from the developing world.

Even if the Supreme Court’s elimination of Chevron deference does not directly improve matters for noncitizens, independent interpretations of the immigration statute by the courts cannot possibly have more negative impacts than the era of deference did. This Essay evaluates how the Supreme Court’s overruling of Chevron will affect judicial review of agency immigration adjudications and may well benefit noncitizens by allowing the courts to have the final word on the meaning of the law.