WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Tuesday curbed the ability of immigrants held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for their release in a ruling in sync with President Donald Trump’s get-tough approach toward immigration.

The court’s conservative justices carried the day in a 5-3 decision that overturned a lower court’s ruling that required that immigrants held by the US government who are awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings get a bond hearing after six months of detention to seek their release.

The ruling could lead to indefinite detentions of certain classes of immigrants, including some with legal status who the government wants to deport.

The court’s five conservatives were in the majority in the ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito, and three liberals dissented, including Justice Stephen Breyer, who sharply criticised the decision. Another liberal, Justice Elena Kagan, did not participate in the ruling.

Class action litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the government’s practice of placing immigrants facing deportation proceedings in detention for months or years without a chance to argue for release.

Breyer said that forbidding bail would likely violate the US constitution’s guarantee of due process under the law. Breyer said he doubted the US Congress, in crafting the immigration provisions at issue in the case, would have wanted to put thousands of people at risk of lengthy confinement in the United States without any hope of bail.

“We need only recall the words of the Declaration of Independence, in particular its insistence that all men and women have ‘certain unalienable Rights,’ and that among them is the right to ‘Liberty,’” Breyer wrote.

But Alito said that the immigration law provisions in question cannot be interpreted to limit the length of detention. He called Breyer’s view of the statutes “utterly implausible”.

The case assumed added importance in light of the Trump administration’s decision to ramp up immigration enforcement, with growing numbers of people likely to end up in detention awaiting deportation.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2018