The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a victory Tuesday by making it easier to detain noncitizens with criminal records.
The justices reversed a lower court decision that required immigration officials to detain noncitizens subject to deportation almost immediately after their release from jail or prison, rather than months or even years later. Advocates for immigrants had argued that such detentions must occur within 24 hours or not at all.
The 5-4 ruling was a victory for the court’s conservative justices, who complained during oral argument in October that the government cannot detain every immigrant immediately – particularly when money and manpower are limited, and state and local “sanctuary city” governments may be opposed.
It was the first decision of the court’s term, which began in October, that resulted in a straight conservative-liberal breakdown. Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion and was joined by four conservatives. Associate Justice Stephen Breyer issued a stinging dissent on behalf of the liberals.
Alito sought to make clear that the ruling was not aimed at “extreme” examples of people picked up years after they have finished serving time, when they are leading law-abiding lives and have blended into their communities. Such immigrants can file individual challenges on constitutional grounds, he said.
But it would be unreasonable, Alito said, for homeland security agents to “turn into pumpkins” at midnight on the day noncitizens are released from custody, forever unable to detain them for deportation proceedings. Various deadlines suggested by immigration rights advocates, he said, “are taken out of thin air.”
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