In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 18-2416 JULIO CESAR NAJERA-RODRIGUEZ, Petitioner, v. WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General of the United States, Respondent. ____________________ Petition for Review of an Order of the Board of Immigration Appeals. No. A060-280-595. ____________________ ARGUED APRIL 4, 2019 — DECIDED JUNE 4, 2019 ____________________ Before RIPPLE, HAMILTON, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Petitioner Julio Cesar Najera-Ro- driguez is a lawful permanent resident of the United States. In 2016, an Illinois state court convicted him of unlawful pos- session of several Xanax pills without a prescription. Federal law provides in relevant part that any non-citizen, including a lawful permanent resident, is removable if he is convicted of a federal or state crime “relating to a controlled substance 2 No. 18-2416 (as defined in section 802 of title 21).” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i). Whether the Xanax possession conviction made Najera-Rodriguez removable depends on whether the Illinois criminal law under which he was convicted, 720 ILCS 570/402(c), is “divisible” for purposes of applying the “modi- fied categorical approach” under the elaborate and some- times technical body of law that has developed under federal recidivism statutes and their immigration law analogs. See, e.g., Mejia Galindo v. Sessions, 897 F.3d 894, 896 (7th Cir. 2018) (summarizing “categorical” and “modified categorical” ap- proaches and “divisibility” as applied to removal of lawful permanent resident under § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i)), citing Mellouli v. Lynch, 135 S. Ct. 1980, 1986–87 & n.3 (2015) (holding that cat- egorical method applies to questions under § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i)). As we explain below, 720 ILCS 570/402(c) is not divisible, so Najera-Rodriguez’s conviction does not render him remova- ble. We therefore grant his petition for judicial review, vacate the removal order, and remand this case to the Board of Im- migration Appeals. I. Facts and Procedural History Julio Cesar Najera-Rodriguez is a thirty-year-old lawful permanent resident. He moved from Mexico to the United States when he was ten years old. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a controlled substance in violation of 720 ILCS 570/402(c). He was sentenced to two years of pro- bation, community service, alcohol and drug treatment, edu- cational requirements, and court fines. In October 2017, the Department of Homeland Security began proceedings to remove Najera-Rodriguez under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2)(B)(i). Najera-Rodriguez argued before an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals No. 18-2416 3 that his conviction under § 402(c) did not qualify as a convic- tion under a law “relating to a controlled substance (as de- fined in section 802 of title 21).” Both the immigration judge and the Board ruled against him and ordered him removed from the United States. He petitions for judicial review of this question of law. II. The Legal Framework Some background is needed even to understand what it means to ask whether Illinois’s § 402(c) is “divisible.” For readers who already understand the concept well, we can foreshadow the answer: § 402(c) uses a list of “controlled sub- ...
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