Offense
Arranging a meeting with a minor (under age 18) or person believed to be a minor, to engage in exposure or other lewd or lascivious conduct, motivated by unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in children
Aggravated Felony (AF)
Shd not be an AF as SAM because no requirement of harm to minor or that a meeting occurs, and can involve 17-year-old.
Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CIMT)
Defenders should assume it will be held a CIMT based on “unnatural or abnormal” interest, although that term might be broadly defined.
Other Removal Grounds
Not a deportable crime of child abuse because the offense includes officer posing as a victim.1PC 288.4 should not be held a deportable crime of child abuse. The BIA held that the generic definition of a deportable crime of child abuse requires a child as the victim, not a police officer posing as child. Matter of Jimenez-Cedillo, 27 I&N Dec. 782, 794 (BIA 2020). Section 288.4(a)(1) includes conduct with “a person he or she believes to be a minor…” See, e.g., People v. Fromuth, 2 Cal. App. 5th 91 (2016) (conviction based on conduct with police officer posing online as a 15-year-old girl). See also PC 288.3 as an option.
Adam Walsh Act. This conviction can block a USC or LPR’s ability to immigrate family members in the future. See § N.13 Convictions that Bar the Defendant from Petitioning for Family Members: the Adam Walsh Act
Advice and Comments
Assume that 288.4(a)(1) is a CIMT. Because it has exposure of just 364 days, if this is the person’s only CIMT it is not a deportable or (if sentence is 180 days or less) inadmissible CIMT conviction. Therefore it can be a relatively neutral plea for an LPR trying to avoid becoming removable.
But for immigrants who must apply for discretionary relief (a group that includes all undocumented people, all deportable LPRs, and most other immigrants), the offense will be a very negative factor in discretion based on ‘abnormal’ interest. If the facts are not egregious, however, the person can attempt to explain.
Note that 288.4(a)(2) and (b) are felonies based on having a prior 290(c) conviction, or actually attending the meeting.