United States v. Donnell Delgado, Jr.

MEMORANDUM

Appellant Donnell Delgado, Jr. appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to dismiss an indictment for failure to register as a sex offender in violation of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (“SORNA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2250 (a), and 42 U.S.C. §§ 16911 , 16913. We review his appeal de novo, United States v. Cabrera-Gutierrez, 756 F.3d 1125, 1129 (9th Cir.2014), and we affirm.

Delgado contends that subjecting him to the federal registration and reporting regime is “fundamentally unfair.” But his arguments reveal that his challenge is in fact a collateral attack on his underlying state sex offense conviction.

Unfortunately for Delgado, SORNA does not authorize such a collateral attack. His argument to the contrary rests entirely on an analogy to a provision of the immigration code, 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (d), which explicitly authorizes a non-citizen to’ collaterally attack a removal order that serves as the predicate for a subsequent criminal prosecution for illegal reentry. SORNA does not contain similar language. Nor does it imply that courts may hear collateral challenges to state sex offense convictions. Instead, it has features similar to the laws…