Looking Back at Matter of Lanferman on Divisibility of Statutes

In deciding whether to apply the categorical or modified categorical approach to determine whether a statute of conviction necessarily or potentially renders an alien removable, it is first necessary to determine whether that statute is divisible.  In Matter of Lanferman, 25 I&N Dec. 721 (BIA 2012), the Board concluded that a statute is divisible, regardless of its structure if, based on the elements of the offense, some but not all violations of the statute give rise to grounds for removability or ineligibility for relief.  In finding this way, the Board adopted the broadest of three potential approaches, allowing divisibility to be found in the statute even when the various permutations are not set apart by “disjunctives or subsections.”