WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders.
In two cases decided Monday, the court said that the immigrants, who fear persecution if sent back to their native countries, have no right under a federal law to a bond hearing at which they could argue for their freedom no matter how long they are held.
The justices also ruled 6-3 to limit the immigrants ability to band together in court, an outcome that Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote “will leave many vulnerable noncitizens unable to protect their rights.”
In recent years, the high court has taken an increasingly limited view of immigrants’ access to the federal court system under immigration measures enacted in the 1990s and 2000s.
“For a while, it seemed like the court was going to push back a bit. In extreme cases, it would interpret a statute to allow for as much judicial review as possible,”said Nicole Hallet, director of the immigrants rights clinic at the University of Chicago law school. “Clearly now, the court is no longer willing to do that.”
The immigrants who sued for a bond hearing are facing being detained for many months, even years, before their cases are resolved.
The court ruled in the cases of people from Mexico and El Salvador who persuaded Homeland Security officials that their fears are credible, entitling them to further review.
Their lawyers argued that they should have a hearing before an immigration judge to determine if they should be released. The main factors are whether people would pose a danger or are likely to flee if set free.
Sotomayor wrote the court’s opinion in one case involving Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, who had previously been deported to Mexico. He was taken into custody four years ago, and won release while his case wound through the federal courts. His hearing on whether he can remain in the United States is scheduled for 2023.
But Sotomayor wrote that the provision of immigration law that applies to people like Arteaga-Martinez simply doesn’t require the government to hold a bond hearing.
The court, however, left open the issue of the immigrants’ ability to argue that the Constitution does not permit such indefinite detention without a hearing.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court’s opinion holding that federal judges can only rule in the case of the immigrants before them, not a class of similarly situated people.
Sotomayor dissented from that decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. She wrote that the ability to join together in a class was especially important for people who have no right to a lawyer and “are disproportionately unlikely to be familiar with the U.S. legal system or fluent in the English language.”
The cases are Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, 19-896, and Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 20-322.
© 2022 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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they are not immigrants.
they are illegal aliens.
If they fear persecutions if they return home, we need to persucute and prosecute them even harder here for being here Illegally in America.
WITH how much crime WE AS A NATION has, how can anyone claim WE ARE a safer nation than where they are coming from, is beyond me..
ERGO SEND THEM ALL back!
YAY !!!!!
This court needs to solve the ILLEGAL situation in ways that do not tie up and overwhelm its ouw supervised courts. What is it about judicial protection for legal citizens and crime and punishment for the criminals that the highest court in the land cannot or refuses to understand? Make America great by first making illegals pay the price for their illegality? It’s not rocket science but basic human morality and justice. Courts themselves are designed to uphold the laws, not create imaginary rights for law breakers. If the Supreme courts of the land cannot understand and enforce this, we have no laws nor need of courts or justices who just manage to steal their salaries by not doing the job THE PEOPLE hired them to do.
ALL politicians who have CODDLED illegals, imo need to be EXILED from this nation, permanently!
No one should get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for entering our country illegally. But late last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration was considering payments of up to $450,000 each to illegal aliens who were caught illegally entering our country in 2018. A family of four could receive almost $2 million.
The Biden administration invited a rush at the border, took away the tools to deal with it, then threw horse-patrol agents under the bus at the first uttering of a patently false narrative. Worse, the administration is now pushing full steam ahead on a vaccine mandate that could severely reduce the Border Patrol workforce.
The Biden administration already has the worst record on immigration and border security in American history. But contemplating $450,000 payments to illegal aliens marks a new low. Who do you think Biden will make pay illegal immigrants $450,000.00?? THE U.S. TAXPAYERS!
AND You can bet, a good chunk of that, got funneled BACK HOME OR To the cartels.
Wonder why there is a backlog in cases? Simple! Joe Biden and the Libs (sounds like a rock group) with their open border policy allowing the the country to be overrun without having a plan to deal with it. Of course, liberals never have a plan to seal with the propblems they create.
That’s like telling a police officer in North Dakota, that you are from Texas and didn’t know N. Dakota laws. Not my fault these illegals aren’t familiar with the US legal system and aren’t fluid in English. Hey illegals, stay in your own fecal dump of a country.
DEPORT!! Period.