Cited in the park on a visa or ESTA. Can I come back?

The paid notice and the definition

Under the 2026 rule of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, the federal court for Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, a paid collateral forfeiture is neither an admission nor an adjudication of guilt, which argues against its being a conviction under this definition; but no immigration authority has yet said so, and the officer applying the definition does not sit in this court. A park marijuana notice under the Park Service regulation is a federal controlled-substance charge. Montana's legal dispensaries sit a few miles from the West and North entrances, and possession inside the park is charged under the federal regulation regardless of where the product was bought.

Deportability, and moral turpitude

A separate provision makes a person deportable for a controlled-substance conviction after admission, with a single exception for one offense involving thirty grams or less of marijuana for personal use (§ 1227(a)(2)(B)(i)). On moral turpitude, the Board of Immigration Appeals has held that a simple DUI, without more, is not. The categories that draw scrutiny are theft, fraud, and offenses with an element of intent to harm, which is why a false statement to a ranger can matter more than the underlying ticket.

A DUI arrest and the visa in your passport

There is one statutory consequence, and it turns on the arrest rather than the outcome. The State Department's manual lets a consular officer, or the Department itself, prudentially revoke a nonimmigrant visa on the strength of a DUI arrest within the previous five years, on the theory that the arrest may signal a medical ground of ineligibility that only a panel physician can clear (9 FAM 403.11-5(B)). The rule reaches people already inside the United States, which the manual otherwise forbids, so the visa in an H-1B, L-1 or F-1 holder's passport can be cancelled while the park case is still open. Status inside the country is not lost, but the next trip abroad ends at a consulate with a new application and a physician's appointment before the return flight. Anyone on a visa who is arrested for DUI in either park should plan travel around that before booking anything.

Speeding, open container, wildlife, thermal areas

These are not controlled-substance offenses and not crimes of moral turpitude. The concern is the record itself and the disclosure questions that follow it, and the difference between a paid Box B notice, which is a disposed federal case, and a dismissal or an infraction-level resolution, which is a much shorter answer on a form. Thermal-area and wildlife cases often add a probation term with a park ban, and probation is something several immigration forms ask about directly.

Question-and-answer sites will tell you a park notice is "an infraction" that "does not require disclosure" and "will not show up." Read the form instead. The I-485 and the N-400 ask whether you have ever been cited, and how the case ended is the next question. A paid forfeiture is not a conviction under the federal court's 2026 rule, but that is an argument to make with the written disposition in hand, not a reason to skip the question. The people answering online have not seen your form; the officer at your interview will.

Two lawyers

I am not an immigration lawyer, and I will not pretend to be one on this page. What I do is the criminal side: get the file, read the regulation, deal with the Assistant U.S. Attorney, and shape the disposition. What I insist on, for a non-citizen client, is doing that in conversation with immigration counsel, yours or one I can recommend, so that the terms I ask the court for are the terms that survive the immigration definition of conviction. A dismissal is easy to evaluate. A deferred agreement, an amended charge, or a plea to a different regulation has to be drafted with the statute open, and the drafting is where these cases are won or lost. Immigration processes have their own calendars, and a pending petty-offense case in Wyoming can stall a renewal or an interview until it is resolved.