{snip}
The case the Supreme Court granted review for on Monday focuses on the detention of lawful permanent residents. Carol Black and Keisy G.M. are both green-card holders who have lived in the United States legally for decades. Black moved to New York from Jamaica in 1983. In 2000, he was convicted of a sex abuse crime, and served five years of probation, until 2005. Based on that conviction, ICE detained Black in 2019 and started deportation proceedings. They held him for seven months. Seeking to be back with his family while his investigation continued, Black sought a hearing where he could receive and post a bond, which the immigration judge would not grant. Ultimately, Black had to file a habeas petition in federal court, arguing that going seven months without a hearing violated his constitutional right to an individualized determination.
{snip}
The Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that both Black and G.M. had constitutional due process rights to a bond hearing. Immigration proceedings, the court explained, are civil, not criminal, matters, and the Supreme Court has long suggested that there would be serious constitutional problems with a statute that allows indefinite civil detention. To be clear, a bond hearing does not guarantee that a person is released; a court is free to assess the flight risk, and to develop as many measures as it sees fit to ensure that the person shows up for the later proceedings. But the complete lack of that individual determination violates the right that someone cannot be denied “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
The Supreme Court might not agree. The statute the government relied on for Black’s and G.M.’s detentions is the Immigration and Nationality Act. And in previous cases, the Supreme Court has interpreted the law’s bond provisions narrowly. In 2003’s Demore, the court held that an initial bond hearing was not required by the statute. Then in 2018’s Jennings, Justice Samuel Alito held that this same statutory provision does not require a bond hearing after a particular period of delay, in a 5–3 ideological opinion (with Justice Elena Kagan recused). The court in Jennings, however, did not rule on whether the Constitution itself requires a bond hearing, which is what the 2nd Circuit decided here.
{snip}
The government’s response to the 2nd Circuit’s ruling is unprecedented. Rather than arguing that the detentions of Black and G.M. were reasonable under the circumstances, the Department of Justice is asking the court to hold that all lawful permanent resident detainees lack the right to a bond hearing—under any circumstances and no matter how long they’ve been held. The government’s briefing makes this point clearly, saying the case “concerns whether Mathews is applicable at all.” In other words, the government would like courts to stop applying the case-by-case inquiry it’s done for half a century, and instead rule categorically against immigrant bond hearings no matter the length of their detention. And it gets worse: The Mathews test doesn’t just apply to disputes over immigration bond hearings, but any time a plaintiff alleges they’ve had their due process violated. In other words, if the court is willing to craft an exemption where it won’t apply it all, it could create a trend that undermines due process across the court system.
{snip}
The post The Supreme Court Will Decide Whether ICE Can Hold People Indefinitely. We Should All Be Worried. appeared first on American Renaissance.
American RenaissanceRead More
T1
