The Trump administration’s war on immigration celebrated a win last week when the United States Supreme Court ruled immigrants do not have the right to periodic bond hearings even if they are asylum seekers and have permanent legal status.
This is bad news for those appealing the government’s practice of indefinitely detaining undocumented individuals who are on average held for 13 months, often for petty offenses.
Immigrant advocates argue many immigrants have a right to be released on bail until their cases are heard. But in its 5-3 opinion, the nation’s highest court wrote:
“Immigration officials are authorized to detain certain aliens in the course of immigration proceedings while they determine whether those aliens may be lawfully present in the country.”
The decision reverses a Ninth Circuit ruling, but it could return to the court for further future consideration.
Stanford Law professor Lucas Guttentag said:
“If they’re required to proceed individually, many of them will never be able to pursue their claims. A class action provides protection to everyone, not just to those who have a lawyer who can file a lawsuit.”
Justice Samuel Alito penned the majority decision which the court’s conservative justices joined.
Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because of work she did as former President Barack Obama’s solicitor general.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented, though. In a rare move, he read from his dissent:
“We need only recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, in particular its insistence that all men and women have ‘certain unalienable Rights,’ and that among them is the right to ‘Liberty.’ Whatever the fiction, would the Constitution leave the Government free to starve, beat, or lash those held within our boundaries? If not, then, whatever the fiction, how can the Constitution authorize the Government to imprison arbitrarily those who, whatever we might pretend, are in reality right here in the United States? No one can claim, nor since the time of slavery has anyone to my knowledge successfully claimed, that persons held within the United States are totally without constitutional protection.”
Alejandro Rodriguez, a legal permanent resident, is the case’s lead plaintiff. He came to the U.S. as a child and worked as a dental assistant. Convicted for joyriding as a teenager and pleading guilty to misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance at 24, he was detained for three years without the right to appear before a judge for bond.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a subsequent class action lawsuit, eventually securing Rodriguez’s release and cancellation of his deportation order.
This month, nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are set to begin losing their temporary work permits at a rate of 1,000 per day.
Immigration lawyers from coast to coast are reporting individuals who pose no risk with minimal or no criminal records are being targeted for deportation.
Over 90 percent of removal proceedings in the first two months of Trump’s tenure have been against people who have committed no crime other living in the country undocumented. Early figures on deportation arrests show the number of people arrested without criminal records has doubled.
Image credit: The New Yorker
