Justices Rule Against Detained Immigrants Seeking Release; SCOTUS Rejects Bond-Hearing Mandate for Aliens Under Removal Orders Seeking Relief; Supreme Court Says Illegal Immigrants Can Be Detained Indefinitely

Justices rule against detained immigrants seeking release:

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. —>READ MORE HERE

SCOTUS Rejects Bond-Hearing Mandate for Aliens Under Removal Orders Seeking Relief:

Signal that a prior Supreme Court precedent may be on borrowed time

There have been three breaking decisions in immigration in the past few days. One — the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez — is important, but it simply corrects erroneous circuit-court precedent and “explains” (read: “narrows”) prior precedent. The second, also from the High Court in Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, is a bit more substantive. The third, from district court Judge Drew Tipton in Texas v. United States, is a bombshell, but not a totally unexpected one. I will discuss the first decision in this post, and the other two in subsequent ones.

Arteaga-Martinez. Arteaga-Martinez is a Mexican national who has entered the United States illegally four times. The first time, in March 2001, he was detained and removed, and he was again detained and removed in 2011.

He claims that when he was returned to Mexico on that occasion, he was beaten by a criminal street gang. Consequently, he reentered illegally in September 2012.

Nearly six years after his return, ICE arrested him and reinstated his prior removal order under section 241(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Arteaga-Martinez applied for statutory withholding under section 241(b)(3) of the INA (which is like asylum, only with a higher burden of proof and fewer benefits) and protection under the Convention Against Torture.

He was referred to an asylum officer, who found that Arteaga-Martinez has a reasonable fear of harm if returned and was placed into “withholding-only” proceedings before an immigration judge at which the only issue is his eligibility for statutory withholding and CAT. —>READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to relevant/related stories:

+++++Supreme Court Says Illegal Immigrants Can Be Detained Indefinitely+++++

Supreme Court backs DHS’ ability to detain illegal immigrants

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