Immigrant rights facing debate
Associated Press/The Dallas Morning News
January 16, 2003

Civil rights lawyers urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to strike down a law requiring immigrants convicted of certain crimes to be locked up indefinitely – even after serving their sentences – until a deportation hearing is held.

The case predates the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But it puts the court in a debate over the rights and treatment of immigrants and raises some of the same civil liberties questions posed on behalf of foreigners because the government has taken steps to better track them after the attacks.

It’s the first time since the attacks that the justices debated a case with direct implications for the government’s war on terrorism, though the attacks weren’t mentioned during arguments.

Bush administration lawyer Theodore Olson told justices that the case is about public safety and immigrants who break the law and no longer have a right to be in the United States.

The justices will decide by this summer if the government can lock up without bail immigrants who have been convicted of certain felonies, served their time and are awaiting deportation proceedings, which can take years.

Many members of the court seemed untroubled by a 1996 mandatory detention law that does not allow for a bond hearing. Immigrants could try to win release by arguing at such a hearing that they are not a public safety risk.

“That doesn’t strike me as terribly unreasonable. Just don’t do the felony,” Justice Antonin Scalia said.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Judy Rabinovitz told justices that some people who are jailed are not dangerous and would not flee if they were released on bail. She also said not all immigrants who are imprisoned end up being deported.

The ACLU’s client, Hyung Joon Kim, was convicted of breaking into a tool shed and shoplifting. After serving his prison sentence, Mr. Kim immediately was jailed without bond by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Mr. Kim, who moved to America from South Korea when he was 6, challenged the detention as a violation of his Fifth Amendment right not to be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” He won in lower courts.