Court says migrants not entitled to release after claiming threats

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the government can indefinitely detain certain migrants who say they will face persecution or torture if they are deported to their native countries.

Over the dissent of three liberal justices, the court held 6-3 that the migrants are not entitled to a hearing about whether they should be released while the government evaluates their claims.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that “those aliens are not entitled to a bond hearing.”

The case involves people who had been previously deported and, when detained after re-entering the United States illegally, claimed that they would be persecuted or tortured if sent back. One man is a citizen of El Salvador who said he was immediately threatened by a gang after being deported from the U.S.

An immigration officer determined that the migrants had a “reasonable fear” for their safety if returned to their countries, setting in motion an evaluation process that can take months or years.

The issue for the court was whether the government could hold the migrants without having an immigration judge weigh in. The migrants and the Trump administration, which briefed and argued the case before President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, pointed to different provisions of immigration law to make their respective cases.

Alito, in his opinion for the court, wrote that the administration’s argument that the relevant provision does not provide for a bond hearing was more persuasive.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer saw it differently. “But why would Congress want to deny a bond hearing to individuals who reasonably fear persecution or torture, and who, as a result, face proceedings that may last for many months or years…? I can find no satisfactory answer to this question,” Breyer wrote.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., had ruled in the migrants’ favor, but other appellate courts had sided with the government. Tuesday’s decision sets a nationwide rule, but one that affects what lawyers for the migrants called a relatively small subset of noncitizens.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes as federal officials said the number of migrant children housed at the Biden administration’s largest emergency shelter for those who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone has dropped by more than 40% since mid-June.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters Monday that 790 boys were housed at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, and the last girl left Monday. All the girls were reunited either with relatives in the U.S. or a sponsor such as a family friend or sent to licensed facilities, which have a higher standard of care, according to the agency responsible for caring for migrant children.

In mid-June, the administration reported about 2,000 boys and girls were at the Fort Bliss facility amid child welfare advocates’ concerns about inadequate conditions. A high of 4,800 children were housed there in May.

Becerra said his agency was evaluating whether it can close some of the emergency shelters that the government opened in the spring as record numbers of unaccompanied children crossed the border. He declined to say whether Fort Bliss would be among them.

“Because we’ve been successful in managing the flow, we are prepared to begin the demobilization of several of our emergency intake sites,” Becerra said.

A rise in the number of migrant children crossing the southwest border alone has challenged the Biden administration.