Court says detained immigrants not entitled to bail hearings

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday said immigrants held by the government and facing deportation are not entitled to a bond hearing even after months or years of detention.

The decision on the case, which had resulted in a deadlock before Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court, has taken on added importance with President Donald Trump’s order of a crackdown on immigration violations.

In a splintered 5 to 3 decision, the court’s conservatives said the relevant statute does not even “hint,” as Justice Samuel Alito, wrote, at the broad reading of the right to bail hearings adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

That court had ruled that an immigrant held in detention must be given a bond hearing every six months and that detention beyond the initial six-month period is permitted only if the government proved that further detention is justified.

Alito rejected that standard, and said the more natural reading of the law at stake is that it authorizes detention “until the end of the applicable procedure.”

The ruling brought an impassioned dissent from Justice Stephen Breyer, who underscored his dissatisfaction by reading part of it from the bench.

“The many thousands of individuals involved in this case are persons who believe they have a right to enter into or remain in the United States, and a sizable number turn out to be right,” Breyer said.

But he said some of them remain in detention for years because the government reads the statute as “denying them the bail hearings that the law makes available even for those accused of serious crimes.” He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Alito called the dissent an “utterly implausible” reading of the statute.

The six-month deadline that the 9th Circuit applied to a wide range of immigrants, from people detained after entering the United States for the first time to longtime legal residents.

The case was brought by Alejandro Rodriguez, a lawful permanent resident who came to the country as an infant. The Department of Homeland Security started removal proceedings because of a conviction for drug possession and an earlier conviction for joyriding.

Rodriguez was held for three years before he challenged his confinement. The average detention for the others who joined his lawsuit was 13 months.