WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court on Tuesday endorsed the U.S. government's authority to detain immigrants awaiting deportation anytime - potentially even years - after they have completed prison terms for criminal convictions, handing President Donald Trump a victory as he pursues hardline immigration policies.
The court ruled 5-4 along ideological lines, with its conservative justices in the majority and its liberal justices dissenting, that federal authorities could place such immigrants into indefinite detention anytime without the possibility of bail, not just immediately after they finish prison sentences.
The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility that some immigrants could challenge their detention. These immigrants potentially could argue that the use of the 1996 federal law involved in the case, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, against them long after finishing their sentences would violate their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. Most of the plaintiffs in the case are legal immigrants.
The law states the government can detain convicted immigrants "when the alien is released" from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers in the case argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released. The Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants anytime.
In dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said the ruling raises serious due process questions. "It runs the gravest risk of depriving those whom the government has detained of one of the oldest and most important of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms," Breyer wrote.
But Alito wrote that it is not the court's job to impose a time limit for when immigrants can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court has previously said that "an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never." Alito said the challengers' assertion that immigrants had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is "especially hard to swallow."
It marked Trump's latest immigration victory at the court. The conservative justices also were in the majority in June 2018 when the court upheld on a 5-4 vote Trump's travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.
Tuesday's decision follows a February 2018 ruling in a similar case in which the conservative majority, over liberal dissent, curbed the ability of immigrants held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for release.
