The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to let it detain people arrested in its immigration crackdown without a chance to seek bond, even if they have lived in the country for years. This request was made in a filing to overturn a May decision by a federal appeals court, which had rejected its reinterpretation of a decades-old immigration law that now underlies its mass detention policy.

Background

The administration filed the appeal earlier this week, before the 6-3 conservative majority court handed it a pair of major wins on immigration policy. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to review a ruling by a 2-1 panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three appeals courts that have joined with hundreds of lower-court judges in rejecting its detention practice.

Two other appeals courts have endorsed the administration’s policy, a fact U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted as he urged the justices to intervene and resolve a “critically important question of immigration law” that is fueling thousands of lawsuits by people challenging their detention. The administration argues that detaining illegal immigrants who are living in the country after an illegal entry while their removal proceedings unfold prevents those immigrants from evading hearings and helps ensure their removal from the United States.

Immigration Law

Under federal immigration law, “applicants for admission” to the United States are subject to mandatory detention while their cases proceed in immigration courts and are ineligible for bond hearings. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year took the position that non-citizens already residing in the United States, and not just people arriving at the border, qualify as “applicants for admission” subject to mandatory detention.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, issued a decision in September that adopted that interpretation. As a result, immigration judges across the country began ordering mandatory detention. The 6th Circuit’s ruling came in cases out of Michigan involving citizens of Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Guatemala who had resided in the United States for years before being arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.