File-sharing child abuse convictions can trigger deportation

A lawful permanent resident in New Jersey lost his bid to stay in the country after the Fourth Circuit said his conviction for storing child sexual abuse material on a file-sharing program counts as child abuse under federal immigration law. For Md Farid Uddin, a Bangladeshi native and Canadian citizen, that classification can support removal from the United States.

The court said the file-sharing setup is what matters. By storing the material in a way that made it searchable or copyable by other computers, the New Jersey offense created a reasonable probability that the images would circulate and harm the children depicted.

Why the file-sharing detail mattered

Uddin was indicted in 2018 and pleaded guilty in 2019 to a New Jersey count covering the knowing storage or maintenance of at least 25 items depicting the sexual exploitation or abuse of a child. The panel said that is not the same as keeping files private on a device or in a cloud account.

Instead, the law at issue covered peer-to-peer sharing software, where files are exposed to search and copying by others on the network. That difference, the court said, was enough to make the offense categorically match child abuse under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

What the ruling means for immigration cases

Because the offense qualifies categorically as child abuse under immigration law, it can be used as a basis to remove a lawful permanent resident. The ruling narrows the room for noncitizens with similar convictions to argue that a state child-exploitation offense is too broad to trigger deportation.

The panel denied the petition in part and dismissed it in part, leaving in place the agency’s denial of Uddin’s requests for cancellation of removal and adjustment of status.