The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration Tuesday in a dispute over the federal government’s power to arrest certain noncitizens who commit crimes and hold them in immigration jails before a deportation proceeding.
The five to four decision was met with a vigorous dissent from the Court’s liberal bloc led by Justice Stephen Breyer, who said the majority was enabling the detention and possible deportation of foreign nationals for minor crimes they committed in the distant past.
Tuesday’s case arose when green card holders Mony Preap and Bassam Yusuf Khoury were arrested by federal immigration authorities years after they served criminal sentences for drug convictions. Preap and Khoury were detained without bail pending deportation.
A five-justice majority said aliens facing deportation may be held in immigration jails without bond hearings in February 2018.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ACLU and ruled for the plaintiffs. The Court’s conservative majority reversed that decision in Tuesday’s ruling, finding federal law requires the detention of certain classes of aliens before removal.
“As we have held time and again, an official’s crucial duties are better carried out late than never,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
The majority connected Tuesday’s case to the ongoing dispute over sanctuary jurisdictions, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Alito said it is difficult for federal officials to discover when noncitizens will be released from prison, since certain states and localities will not provide that information.
“Under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that Congress made the secretary’s mandatory-detention authority vanish at the stroke of midnight after an alien’s release,” the opinion reads.
Alito elsewhere said the “when…released” language simply establishes when the federal government’s detention duty is triggered while “exhorting the secretary to act quickly.”
The decision was limited in one respect — Alito cautioned that certain noncitizens who are detained long after serving their jail sentences may bring “as applied” constitutional challenges to their arrest by immigration authorities.
More at: https://truepundit.com/supreme-court...commit-crimes/
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