Supreme Court takes up Trump’s mandatory detention policy
The Supreme Court announced on Thursday it will decide the legality of President Trump’s mandatory detention policy, putting one of his banner immigration programs on the justices’ docket for their upcoming term.
The Trump administration argues it can detain people without bond if they’re found to be in the country unlawfully, even if they have been living on U.S. soil for years.
It’s a significant expansion of the government’s immigration powers. The push has fueled thousands of cases claiming the policy exceeds federal law, creating an avalanche of work for judges across the country, who are racing to keep up.
The dispute is set to be heard during the Supreme Court’s upcoming term. Oral arguments are expected early next year, with a decision likely by summer.
The Trump administration brought two cases to the justices after losing before lower court judges. Circuit courts have mostly ruled against the president.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said it’s “disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law.”
“Moreover, the volume of habeas litigation will continue to impose immense burdens on district courts and U.S. Attorney’s Offices throughout the nation until this issue is resolved,” Sauer wrote in court filings.
Under previous administrations, those who were detained had a right to push for their release from detention in front of an immigration judge.
Detention rates under Trump have skyrocketed, with more than 65,000 people held in facilities across the country.
Advocates for immigrants have noted that that the vast majority of those detained migrants — roughly 70 percent — have no criminal convictions. Many are also legal immigrants, including those who have active immigration petitions that have not yet been acted on due to administrative backlogs.
In the most recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the court noted the “tsunami” of habeas petitions spurred by the administration’s new interpretation.
“Hundreds of federal district courts have considered the question we consider today. The overwhelming majority—over five hundred—rejected the Government’s new construction and sided with the petitioners in over twenty thousand individual cases,” the appeals court wrote.
But they determined Congress did not give the department authority to broadly detain every migrant in passing the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIA).
“If we were to agree with the Government’s construction, we would need to conclude that, in passing IIRIRA thirty years ago, Congress intended to direct the single largest mass detention of human beings in our nation’s history,” they wrote.
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