U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Federal Ban on Gun Possession for Migrants in the Country Illegally

A U.S. appeals court upheld a federal law that bars migrants who are in the United States illegally from possessing guns, rejecting arguments by a Mexican man convicted of unlawfully having a handgun that the ban was unconstitutional.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday that the ban was still valid even after recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have expanded gun rights by requiring firearms restrictions to be in keeping with the nation's history and tradition.

The panel said those Supreme Court rulings did not unequivocally undermine an earlier decision by the 5th Circuit holding that the plain text of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment does not encompass immigrants in the county illegally.

"We should not extend rights to illegal aliens any further than what the law requires," U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, wrote in a concurring opinion.

The ruling came in an appeal by Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, who had been arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Texas in 2022 and charged with illegally possessing a handgun and unlawfully re-entering the country after being previously deported.

Medina-Cantu pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year to 15 months in prison, but he preserved the right to argue on appeal that the gun charge violated his right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

His lawyers based their argument on a landmark 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority that established a new test for assessing whether modern firearm restrictions comply with the Second Amendment.

The court's ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required gun regulations to be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Many laws have been declared invalid following that decision.

Medina-Cantu's lawyers argued the ruling likewise undermined a 2011 decision by the 5th Circuit upholding the immigration-related ban as there was no historical tradition dating back to around when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 of disarming people based solely on their immigration status.

But the three-judge panel said the Supreme Court's recent rulings on gun rights "did not unequivocally abrogate our precedent that the plain text of the Second Amendment does not encompass illegal aliens."

Medina-Cantu's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.