Supreme Court to decide if migrants detained for months must receive bond hearings
By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide if the government may hold noncitizens in detention for prolonged periods without a bond hearing, a case that could have significant implications for the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
At the center of the dispute are two green card holders who had been convicted of aggravated felonies that immigration officials sought to deport to the Dominican Republic in one case and to Jamaica in the other. One of the men was held for seven months and the other for nearly two years as their removal cases were pending.
Neither received a hearing to assess whether they were a flight risk or could be released on bond.
A federal appeals court in New York ruled in 2024 that the due process clause requires a bond hearing for prolonged detention for noncitizens. The Trump administration appealed that decision to the Supreme Court in January, arguing that it was “seriously misguided.”
The law at issue requires mandatory detention for noncitizens convicted of a list of crimes. The Trump administration has reclassified certain types of immigrants to sweep far more people into mandatory detention — a move that has been repeatedly challenged in court and that is likely to be ultimately reviewed by the Supreme Court.
The two men at the center of the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued that the Supreme Court should decline to hear the case. That’s partly because, the group said, one of the men had already left the country and the other was released and, according to his attorneys, ICE has not attempted to re-detain him.
In 2016, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar challenge and concluded that federal law did not require bond hearings. But the court’s divided decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, declined to answer whether the Constitution would require those hearings after prolonged detention.
“The court reads the statute as forbidding bail, hence forbidding a bail hearing, for these individuals,” liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who has since retired, wrote in dissent at the time. “In my view, the majority’s interpretation of the statute would likely render the statute unconstitutional.”
The Trump administration also appealed the 2nd Circuit’s holding that, in order to continue detention, the government must prove that a noncitizen poses a flight risk or is a danger to the community with a higher standard of evidence than is required in other cases.
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