The US Supreme Court will decide how long people detained by ICE can be held.

The US Supreme Court will soon consider whether those detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with serious criminal charges can be held indefinitely while their deportation proceedings continue, writes Politico.

The case in question is Genalo v. Black, a constitutional dispute over whether the US government can detain immigrants with criminal records indefinitely pending deportation.

The case centers on a provision of immigration law that requires mandatory detention for certain categories of people with criminal records. The Supreme Court has previously considered similar issues, but left open the question of whether excessive detention violates due process rights.

On the subject: Why can a green card holder be deported, and what to do in such a case?

The case revolves around the situations of two lawful permanent residents of the United States with criminal records.

One of the defendants is a woman named Carol Williams Black. She is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and spent approximately seven months in custody. She was detained due to a previous conviction. The second defendant is a man named Casey G.M., also a lawful permanent resident. He was held in custody for approximately twenty-one months.

The Court of Appeal sided with the immigrants and ruled that if a person is detained for a long time, he or she has the right to a hearing where the authorities must prove the need for continued detention.

The Supreme Court is currently determining whether such mandatory long-term detention is constitutional, whether regular bail hearings should be held, and who should bear the burden of proof. At the same time, the justices are assessing whether the dispute has become moot now that Carol Black has fled the country and the other defendant is long free.

Federal law requires the detention of migrants facing deportation proceedings if they have been convicted or arrested for serious crimes. The list of such crimes was expanded early in Donald Trump's presidency with the passage of the Laken Riley Act. (The Laken Riley Act is a U.S. federal law named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela in February 2024.) The law was signed by President Donald Trump on January 29, 2025, and was the first bill he signed into law during his second term.

This law requires immigration authorities to detain without bail all undocumented immigrants or those in the country without legal grounds if they have been arrested, charged, or pleaded guilty to crimes such as theft, robbery, shoplifting, burglary, assault on a police officer, or any crime resulting in serious bodily harm or death. The law also gives states the right to sue the federal government if they believe immigration decisions are harmful to them. The goal of the law is to tighten controls on undocumented criminals and prevent them from being released again, as happened with Laken Riley's killer. Approx. Ed.)

On June 15, the justices agreed to consider whether detainees held in long-term detention are entitled to a bail hearing. At such a hearing, an immigration judge must assess whether they pose a credible threat to public safety. Courts across the country have grappled with similar questions in recent months, and their positions differ sharply: some recognize such rights, others do not, and they also differ in their definitions of when detention becomes unconstitutionally "extended."

This issue reached the Supreme Court 25 years after the justices considered a similar problem: how long the state can detain migrants who have already been issued final deportation orders. Then, in Zadvydas v. Davis, the court concluded that detention is "presumptively reasonable" for approximately six months while immigration authorities attempt to arrange deportation. However, after this period, detainees have the right to seek release if they can demonstrate that their removal is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

This benchmark has never been applied to ICE detainees whose deportation cases are pending.

The Supreme Court's decision to hear this issue marks the most significant step yet in addressing the Trump administration's broad interpretation of detention powers and its attempts to curtail due process rights for the hundreds of thousands of people ICE is attempting to deport. However, this is likely not the last such case.

Courts across the country are also weighing the implications of a dramatic expansion of mandatory detention, which ICE now applies to people who have lived in the United States for years, sometimes decades, without any violations. Previously, such measures were primarily applied to those apprehended while crossing the border. Now, the Trump administration has reinterpreted the law so that migrants apprehended anywhere in the country are effectively treated as if they had just crossed the border and are placed in detention.

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This unprecedented change has sparked a flood of lawsuits from ICE detainees.

It's unclear, however, whether the court will ultimately rule on the issue of long-term detention in this particular case. The case centers on the situations of two individuals: a woman who left the United States in 2023 and a man who has been at large for several years.

The judges made it clear that they were considering the issue of "loss of the subject matter" alongside the core issue of whether or not there was a right to due process.

Read also on ForumDaily:

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