Rodolfo Hernandez pleaded guilty to federal marijuana-trafficking charges and received a 120-month sentence. An intervening Supreme Court decision, Padilla, recognized counsel’s duty to explain when a guilty plea may lead to deportation. Hernandez later moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate his sentence, alleging that counsel had told him Cuban defendants generally were not detained or deported and that he would have gone to trial rather than risk separation from his family and home in the United States. The district court denied the motion without an evidentiary hearing, reasoning that counsel could not have anticipated Padilla. The Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded. It held that Padilla governed whether counsel’s advice about immigration consequences was deficient, even though Hernandez pleaded guilty before that decision. Hernandez alleged specific facts that, if true, could show deficient performance because deportation was presumptively mandatory for his drug convictions. He also alleged specific facts supporting prejudice: avoiding deportation could rationally have mattered more to him than avoiding a longer prison term. The court directed the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on whether Hernandez was entitled to relief.