The Supreme Court today granted immigrants facing detention new rights and protections. The ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky requires defense attorneys to accurately advise their non-citizen clients of the potential immigration consequences of pleading guilty to a crime. Under current law, deportation is the mandatory result of many criminal convictions, including minor ones like marijuana possession or shoplifting. Unknowingly, many immigrants, even green card holders, initiate their own deportation when they plea guilty in an attempt to secure a minimum punishment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it is well on it’s way to deporting a record 150,000 people because of a conviction. As things stand, American law does not consider deportation to be a punishment, but rather a civil sanction. As a result, the law does not consider deporting a person after they serve a criminal sentence to be double jeopardy. While today’s decision will do nothing to challenge this—the court is far too conservative for a ruling of that kind—“the decision,” says Bill Hing, an immigration law professor at UC Davis, “may have a very big impact.”