Jose Manuel Mendoza v. United States

W hether a defendant seeking to vacate a conviction on Sixth Amendment grounds must produce contemporaneous plea-stage evidence to establish prejudice under Padilla v. Kentucky and Lee v. United States, or whether prejudice must be evaluated from the totality of the circumstances, including the defendant’s ties to the United States and the centrality of avoiding permanent exile.

Whether, after Padilla rejected the directcollateral distinction as “ill-suited” to immigration consequences, a court may sustain a guilty plea entered without any specific advisement that the plea would trigger a mandatory, automatic, and permanent bar to lawful status and reentry.