The Denver-based federal appeals court concluded last month that it was appropriate for immigration authorities to consider a man’s 20-year-old impaired driving convictions when determining if he recently exhibited “good moral character.”

Under federal law, an immigrant seeking to remain in the country is eligible for relief if they have been continuously present in the U.S. for 10 years, have no convictions for certain offenses, and removal would cause a hardship to qualifying family members. Further, in the prior decade, they must have been “a person of good moral character.”

Adan Enrique Luna-Corona is a Mexican citizen who entered the United States in the mid-1990s. Between 1995 and 1998, he incurred three convictions for driving under the influence.

In 2017, Luna-Corona pleaded guilty to a fourth DUI. Shortly afterward, the government moved to deport him.

After a 2019 hearing, Denver-based Immigration Judge Ivan Gardzelewski concluded Luna-Corona had not met the good moral character requirement. He acknowledged Luna-Corona had only one drunk driving offense within the prior 10 years.

Yet, excluding the three older convictions “would ignore the widely recognized relationship between recidivist behavior and one’s moral character,” Gardzelewski wrote. The repeat offenses were “a continuation of multiple lapses in judgment.”

The Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the decision, agreeing that Luna-Corona’s recidivism was an appropriate factor when weighing his good moral character.

On Nov. 17, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit acknowledged the logic of limiting consideration to convictions within the 10-year period outlined in law. However, the panel invoked federal courts’ “treatment of recidivists” in criminal cases to conclude it was within-bounds to look at repeat conduct for immigration purposes.

The Board of Immigration Appeals and the immigration judge “treated Petitioner’s 2017 DUI conviction so seriously because it was his fourth such conviction,” wrote Judge Harris L Hartz. “In doing so, the BIA and IJ were not reflecting on what Petitioner’s moral character had been back in 1995 or 1996. Rather, they were saying that his moral character was bad in 2017 because he was unable to keep himself from repeating serious misconduct for which he had been convicted.”

Luna-Corona’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

The case is Luna-Corona v. Bondi.