The Supreme Court’s conservative justices said on Tuesday that the federal government can detain certain immigrants indefinitely, ruling that asylum-seekers who reenter the U.S. without authorization and are then detained shouldn’t even be allowed to ask for bond to pursue their case in freedom, the Los Angeles Times reports. Only justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.
Right-wing justice Samuel Alito authored the opinion, “the worst possible justice you could want to write an immigration case,” tweeted American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “The end result of Guzman-Chavez is that the Supreme Court has once again upheld the government's right to lock certain immigrants in jails and prisons for months, if not years, while they fight their cases—without ever letting them ask a judge for bail.”
According to the LA Times, attorneys for the previous administration had argued in lower courts that immigrants should be detained indefinitely because they couldn’t be trusted to stick around for their cases. This has been an enduring Republican trope, because the government’s own data shows that most asylum-seekers in fact regularly attend their hearings. “In fiscal year 2018, Department of Justice (DOJ) figures show that 89 percent of all asylum applicants attended their final court hearing to receive a decision on their application,” Human Rights First said in 2019.
As the LA Times reports, attorneys for detained people argued that of course asylum-seekers show up to court, because they want to win their cases so they won’t be returned to the dangers from which they fled in the first place. The Washington Post reports that one asylum-seeker from the litigation was “a citizen of El Salvador who said he was immediately threatened by a gang after being deported from the U.S.”
While the Post said attorneys described immigrants affected by Supreme Court’s ruling as a “relatively small subset of noncitizens,” Reichlin-Melnick said it’ll affect thousands. “The question the Supreme Court was asked in Guzman-Chavez wasn’t whether the roughly 3,000 people a year in ‘withholding only’ hearings should be released from ICE jails,” he continued. “It was whether they have a right to even ASK to be released. Today the Supreme Court said no.”
In the case’s dissent, Breyer wrote that he could “find no good reason why Congress would have wanted categorically to deny bond hearings to those who, like respondents, seek to have removal withheld or deferred due to a reasonable fear of persecution or torture.” For a deeper look into the case by people much, much smarter than me, check out SCOTUSblog.
In another recent blow by the Supreme Court, the conservative justices in another 6-3 decision ruled against the ability of union organizers in California to access agricultural worksites to speak to farm laborers. Chief Justice John Roberts claimed in the decision that “the access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property,”The New York Times reported. Breyer wrote in his dissent that “n my view, the majority’s conclusion threatens to make many ordinary forms of regulation unusually complex or impractical.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Cedar Point v. ALRB makes a racist and broken farm labor system even more unequal,” United Farm Workers said in a statement. “Farm workers are the hardest working people in America. This decision denies them the right to use their lunch breaks to freely discuss whether they want to have a union. The Supreme Court has failed to balance a farmer’s property rights with a farm worker’s human rights.”
Right-wing justice Samuel Alito authored the opinion, “the worst possible justice you could want to write an immigration case,” tweeted American Immigration Council policy counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “The end result of Guzman-Chavez is that the Supreme Court has once again upheld the government's right to lock certain immigrants in jails and prisons for months, if not years, while they fight their cases—without ever letting them ask a judge for bail.”
According to the LA Times, attorneys for the previous administration had argued in lower courts that immigrants should be detained indefinitely because they couldn’t be trusted to stick around for their cases. This has been an enduring Republican trope, because the government’s own data shows that most asylum-seekers in fact regularly attend their hearings. “In fiscal year 2018, Department of Justice (DOJ) figures show that 89 percent of all asylum applicants attended their final court hearing to receive a decision on their application,” Human Rights First said in 2019.
As the LA Times reports, attorneys for detained people argued that of course asylum-seekers show up to court, because they want to win their cases so they won’t be returned to the dangers from which they fled in the first place. The Washington Post reports that one asylum-seeker from the litigation was “a citizen of El Salvador who said he was immediately threatened by a gang after being deported from the U.S.”
While the Post said attorneys described immigrants affected by Supreme Court’s ruling as a “relatively small subset of noncitizens,” Reichlin-Melnick said it’ll affect thousands. “The question the Supreme Court was asked in Guzman-Chavez wasn’t whether the roughly 3,000 people a year in ‘withholding only’ hearings should be released from ICE jails,” he continued. “It was whether they have a right to even ASK to be released. Today the Supreme Court said no.”
In the case’s dissent, Breyer wrote that he could “find no good reason why Congress would have wanted categorically to deny bond hearings to those who, like respondents, seek to have removal withheld or deferred due to a reasonable fear of persecution or torture.” For a deeper look into the case by people much, much smarter than me, check out SCOTUSblog.
In another recent blow by the Supreme Court, the conservative justices in another 6-3 decision ruled against the ability of union organizers in California to access agricultural worksites to speak to farm laborers. Chief Justice John Roberts claimed in the decision that “the access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property,”The New York Times reported. Breyer wrote in his dissent that “n my view, the majority’s conclusion threatens to make many ordinary forms of regulation unusually complex or impractical.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Cedar Point v. ALRB makes a racist and broken farm labor system even more unequal,” United Farm Workers said in a statement. “Farm workers are the hardest working people in America. This decision denies them the right to use their lunch breaks to freely discuss whether they want to have a union. The Supreme Court has failed to balance a farmer’s property rights with a farm worker’s human rights.”