A situation where a citizen of a foreign country has lived in Georgia for years, has a business established, and one day finds themselves involved in an offense that provides for deportation as a punishment. The client wants to know whether, after serving the sentence, they will automatically leave, or whether remaining in Georgia is possible. The answer in the law is more complex than it appears in a single sentence, deportation is neither automatic nor absolute.
A separate type of punishment was added to the Criminal Code, which entails the deportation of a foreigner from Georgia and a ban on entering Georgia. Previously a similar measure existed in administrative form, but now it is directly part of the criminal punishment system, which means that the matter is decided not by a migration authority, but by the court in its judgment.
For the purposes of this punishment, the law considers as a foreigner any person who is not a citizen of Georgia, including a stateless person with status in Georgia. The term depends on the severity of the crime, for example, from two to ten years for a less serious crime, and from five to twenty years, or even for life, for a serious or particularly serious crime. Importantly, this is not automatically imposed in every case, the court must conclude that, given the nature of the act committed and the personality of the offender himself, his remaining in Georgia is no longer appropriate. This wording leaves the court real discretion, and accordingly deportation is not an automatic addition to a term of imprisonment.
Here, in this situation, the most practical part of the law begins: cases in which deportation does not apply at all, even though the court may have already ordered it. The law directly prohibits deporting a person to a country where they are persecuted for political convictions, or for an act that is not considered a crime at all under Georgian legislation. The same applies to human rights defenders, persons defending peace, and persons engaged in progressive social, political, scientific or creative activity, if it is precisely because of this that they are threatened with persecution in the country of destination. The third exception is relatively intuitive: if deportation would threaten the person's life or health, the deportation will not be carried out. The fourth, probably the most frequently applied ground, concerns the risk of torture or degrading treatment, which is directly linked to the law "On International Protection."
The verification of the existence of these grounds does not happen on its own, for this a request from the prosecutor or investigator to the Ministry of Internal Affairs is required, which has 30 days to issue a conclusion. An interesting exception is the case of a plea agreement: if the parties have already agreed that part of the sentence will be deportation, this conclusion is not required at all. In practice this means that the defense, together with the accused, must weigh in advance whether the specific country is genuinely safe for return, before signing the agreement.
The timing of enforcement also differs depending on the type of sentence, if the foreigner is serving a prison term, deportation occurs immediately upon completion of the imprisonment; in the case of a non-custodial sentence, before the sentence is served; and in the case of a suspended sentence, before the expiration of the probation period. There is a separate regulation for competition with extradition: if extradition proceedings are underway against the person, deportation will not be carried out, except in the narrow case where deportation is planned specifically to the same state that is requesting extradition.
This provision shows well that modern criminal law no longer treats the deportation of a foreigner as an automatic, technical consequence, it requires an individual assessment both at the stage of imposing the sentence and at the stage of its enforcement. From a practical standpoint, this means that the defense strategy should not be limited solely to the criminal law side, if there is a real risk of persecution or improper treatment in the client's country of origin, this argument should be raised and documented right from the start of the process. It is precisely this ground that can genuinely halt the enforcement of deportation even after the sentence has already been imposed.