Supreme Court Filing Targets Bond Hearings
The Trump administration on Friday petitioned the US Supreme Court to permit the detention of individuals arrested in its immigration crackdown without the opportunity to seek bond, even if they have resided in the United States for years. The filing, made public on Friday, seeks to overturn a May decision by a federal appeals court that rejected the administration's reinterpretation of a decades-old immigration law underpinning its mass detention policy.
Conservative Court's Recent Immigration Wins
The appeal was submitted earlier this week, before the 6-3 conservative-majority court handed the administration two major immigration victories on Thursday, including allowing it to strip protections against deportation for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The administration now asks the justices to review a ruling by a 2-1 panel of the Cincinnati-based Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three appeals courts—along with hundreds of lower-court judges—that have rejected its detention practice.
Solicitor General Argues for Detention Authority
Two other appeals courts have endorsed the administration's policy, a fact US Solicitor General D. John Sauer highlighted in urging the justices to resolve a “critically important question of immigration law” that has sparked thousands of lawsuits from individuals challenging their detention. “Detaining aliens who are living in the country after an illegal entry while their removal proceedings unfold prevents those aliens from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States,” Sauer argued in the petition.
Shift in Interpretation of Immigration Law
Bucking a longstanding interpretation of immigration law, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last year took the position that non-citizens already residing in the US—not just those arriving at the border—qualify as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention. Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed in immigration courts and are ineligible for bond hearings.
Board of Immigration Appeals Decision
The Board of Immigration Appeals, part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September adopting that interpretation. As a result, immigration judges—also employed by the department—began ordering mandatory detention nationwide. The Sixth Circuit's ruling stemmed from cases in Michigan involving citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Guatemala who had lived in the United States for years before being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both DHS agencies.
Appeals Court Rejects Interpretation
The Sixth Circuit held that the administration misinterpreted a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and that the migrants were denied bond hearings in violation of their due process rights under the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
