This is a very big deal, even though you probably won’t hear much about it in the mainstream media. In essence, the Supreme Court said the federal government can detain someone here illegally for deportation at any time, and not just within 24 hours after being released from prison for other crimes he committed. From the Washington Examiner:
The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility that some individual immigrants could challenge their detention. These immigrants potentially could argue that the use of the 1996 federal law involved in the case, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, against them long after finishing their sentences would violate their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
The law states the government can detain convicted immigrants “when the alien is released” from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released. The Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants anytime.
It is not the court’s job, Alito wrote, to impose a time limit for when immigrants can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court has said in the past that “an official’s crucial duties are better carried out late than never.”
Alito said the challengers’ assertion that immigrants had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is “especially hard to swallow.”
No kidding. Our federal government is massive with layers and layers of bureaucracy and red tape, making it almost impossible for anything to happen quickly. Combine this reality with the number of illegals in our federal and state prison systems, and we’ve got molasses in winter. To expect the Feds to be ready to snap up an illegal within 24 hours of his or her release from prison for a previous crime is so extreme and so far outside the realm of a reasonable expectation that it’s laughable. The lawyers who brought these cases to the Supreme Court knew this, too. Their goal was to make it so the feds fail to pick up any illegals for detention and deportation. Today, the Supreme Court thankfully shot them down.
