WASHINGTON (CN) — The government’s indefinite detention of immigrants waiting for deportation divided the Supreme Court during Tuesday’s argument session as the justices squabbled over how to apply their precedents to the case without creating chaos for the lower courts.
At the heart of the case Tuesday are Antonio Arteaga-Martinez and Esteban Aleman Gonzalez, who came to the U.S. in search of a safer life because they feared violence in Mexico, their home country, at the hands of street gangs and criminals. The U.S. government previously deported both men back to Mexico after older border crossings, but both men chose to return repeatedly because of existing safety concerns.
As the men insist that they qualify for asylum because they fear violence back home, their legal battles have proved lengthy, leaving them in detention for indefinite periods of time. The Biden administration claims noncitizens must wait out their proceedings in detention, but Arteaga-Martinez and Gonzalez claim they were entitled to bond hearings after six months.
The cases relied heavily on the 2001 decision in Zadvydas v. Davis, in which Justice Stephen Breyer established that noncitizens could not be held indefinitely while waiting for their removal from the country. Zadvydas said that noncitizens must be removed from detention after six months when their removal is not “reasonably foreseeable.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the court needed to better define that definition to rule in the case.
After four months in detention, Arteaga-Martinez applied for a habeas petition asking the government to release him or provide a hearing to justify his continued detention. The government determined that his petition was premature since he had not yet been detained for six months. Once Arteaga-Martinez reached the six-month mark on his detention, a district court granted his habeas petition and ordered a bond hearing. The government appealed, but the Third Circuit summarily affirmed.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed the government’s lawyer on his claim that most detentions are less than six months and that some proceedings last years. She asked how immigrants — most of whom do not speak English or have a legal background — are supposed to protect their rights when they aren’t entitled to lawyers to represent them.
“It's hard to see how impoverished people unfamiliar with the workings of this government, of this country, are going to find lawyers,” the Obama appointee remarked. “Seems like a theoric offering to say that an individual hearing is of any benefit to them, counsel.”
The government warned a ruling in the case could have large implications on immigration law.
“In terms of the lower courts, if we are flushing out reasonably foreseeable future there could be chaos unless we say something more specific,” the Trump appointee said.
Justice Elena Kagan seemed cautious about expanding Zadvydas.
“Suppose that this court thinks about Zadvydas as, you know, a precedent that needs to be applied, but not one that is altogether comfortable and should not be extended,” the Obama appointee said.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked the government’s lawyers how to limit the precedent without overruling it.
“I'm wondering … if you think that Zadvydas should be limited, as opposed to Zadvydas should be overruled, my question is, how do you distinguish the applicability of 1231h,” Roberts asked.
Pratik Shah, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss, representing Arteaga-Martinez said the justices just had to apply Zadvydas for his client to prevail. For the government, however, Zadvydas doesn’t apply because Arteaga-Martinez’s detention was not indefinite.
“Unlike in Zadvydas, the detention here pending a proceeding is not indefinite,” said Austin Raynor, assistant to the solicitor general at the Department of Justice. “It has a logical termination point, the conclusion of the proceeding. It, therefore, does not trigger the Zadvydas rule.”
Arteaga-Martinez had been living and working in the U.S. for almost six years when he was detained in May of 2018. The government again attempted to remove him from the country, but an asylum officer determined he had a reasonable fear of future persecution and torture if he returned to Mexico.
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