Trump Supreme Court candidates appear to differ in immigration matters

But he was not sure they would come to the same conclusion.

The question was whether the federal law requires the authorities to detain – without a hearing – persons legally in the country who have committed certain crimes rendering them liable to expulsion. On the other side of the file were immigrants who had been in the United States for years without incident after serving their prison term. But they were arrested and detained without the possibility of release while fighting deportation measures.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, who was confirmed in court in 2017, appeared concerned that the law gave federal officials too much power to call such people, even decades after serving their sentence, for crimes that could be a bit minor.

"Is there a limit to the power of the government?" Gorsuch asked Justice Department attorney Zachary D. Tripp.

New Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, pointed out that this could be a reason for the court not to impose time constraints on the government.

"Congress knew it would not be immediate, and yet it did not set a deadline," Kavanaugh told Cecillia D. Wang, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, representing a group of people held.

"This poses a real question to me: should there be a lapse of time in the statute when Congress, at least as I read it, did not do it itself?"

As was often the case, judges were arguing that the lower courts considered the ambiguous wording of a federal statute. He says that the Attorney General "must detain any foreigner" who has committed certain offenses "when this foreigner is released".

This when was the case on.

The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit interpreted the term "when" as meaning immediately after the completion of the sentence.

In the case before the court, Mony Preap was born in a refugee camp after the flight of her parents from Cambodia. He has been living legally in the United States since 1981. In 2006, he was convicted of possession of marijuana – a conviction that could have led to his death. deportation – but was not taken back by the federal authorities after he was sentenced to serve a sentence.

In 2013, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for battery, a charge that does not constitute a deportable offense. But he was arrested and detained for months without a hearing, although he was later released and no longer threatened with deportation.

Tripp said that Congress knew, when drafting the law, that one should not expect the federal authorities to pick one up as soon as they come out of jail. And the government complained of the lack of cooperation of the authorities in "sanctuary communities" complicates their work.

The Obama administration had the same vision of the requirements of the law, but the Trump administration has put more emphasis on evictions.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., like Kavanaugh, asked if the court had a role to play in asking what Congress wanted.

"I can see the stock when the stranger is free for several years," said Alito. "But Congress, wisely or not, thought this class of foreigners was dangerous and should not be trusted. Bail hearings were unreliable.

But judges Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen G. Breyer said that reading the law like the government could raise what Breyer called "huge" constitutional problems.

He noted that some of those eligible for detention and deportation had been in the country for years and had committed minor crimes.

"You think that a person 50 years later, who is on his deathbed, after stealing some bus transfers, that this [law] says that the Attorney General must release him and hold him without bail? Breyer asked.

Even a "triple ax murderer" is entitled to a hearing, Breyer said.

The case is Nielsen c. Preap.