Jailed immigrants lose legal fight
Supreme Court decision fortifies the government’s power to detain those battling deportation.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened the Trump administration’s power to hold immigrants in jail for months or years as they fight deportation, ruling that federal law gives such detainees no right to a bail hearing or a chance to go free.
In the 5-3 decision, the court’s majority found that federal law says immigrants who face deportation “shall be detained” while their cases are being considered. The court’s conservatives rejected the view of federal judges in California who said detained immigrants had a right to a bail hearing after six months in jail.
The ruling is a setback, but not a final defeat, for immigrant rights activists in Los Angeles who brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of noncitizens who are arrested and held for possible deportation. They include people who seek asylum because they are fleeing persecution as well as people who have lawful status here but were arrested because they have a criminal record.
Many of the immigrants eventually win their cases, but only after they have spent a year or more in jail. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided the detainees should have a hearing after six months and a right to go free if they could show they were not a danger to the community or likely to flee.
The case of Jennings vs. Rodriguez began in lower courts a decade ago, before Barack Obama was elected president. It was first argued at the high court in November 2016, a few weeks after Donald Trump won election. Trump’s campaign pledge to round up and deport more immigrants had raised the stakes in the case.
At the end of the last term, the court said it would rehear the case in the current term, presumably to allow the newly arrived Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to cast a vote.
Even after an unusually long time to reach a decision, the court issued only a partial ruling.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., speaking for the high court, said the federal immigration law did not call for bail hearings and the 9th Circuit had no authority to order them.
However, the justices did not rule on whether the Constitution gives detained immigrants a right to a hearing, and it sent the case back to California for that issue to be decided.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer read his dissent in court and said the ruling would affect thousands of people in jail “who believe they have a right to enter or remain in the United States.… This court, I think for first time ever, reads a statute as permitting longterm confinement of a ‘person’ in the United States without an opportunity to obtain bail.”
As he noted, the Constitution says no person “shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” and the word “person” has been understood to include noncitizens and immigrants who are here illegally.
Joining Alito in the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Gorsuch and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
The dissenters included Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Elena Kagan sat out the case, possibly because she worked in the Justice Department when the case was first appealed.