BREAKING: Supreme Court sides with Trump on big immigration ruling versus the ACLU!

The Supreme Court this morning just gave the Trump administration a victory on immigration law after being challenged by the ACLU.

At issue is a law which mandates the detention of certain immigrants designated for deportation after they’ve committed specific crimes.

It appears the ACLU was trying to restrict the government’s ability to detain these criminal immigrants, suggesting they had to detain them within 24 hours of being let out of prison.

But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, essentially said that the government can pick and detain these criminal immigrants whenever they want.

Here’s more from Reuters:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday endorsed the U.S. government’s authority to detain immigrants awaiting deportation anytime – potentially even years – after they have completed prison terms for criminal convictions, handing President Donald Trump a victory as he pursues hardline immigration policies.

The court ruled 5-4, with its conservative justices in the majority and its liberal justices dissenting, that federal authorities could pick up such immigrants and place them into indefinite detention anytime, not just immediately after they finish their prison sentences.

“It’s not the court’s job to impose time limits…”

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility of individual immigrants challenging the 1996 federal law involved in the case, called the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, on constitutional grounds – their right to due process – if they are detained long after they have completed their sentences.

The law at issue states that the government can detain convicted immigrants “when the alien is released” from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers for two groups of plaintiffs argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released. The Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants anytime.

It is not the court’s job, Alito wrote, to impose a time limit for when immigrants can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court repeatedly has said in the past that “an official’s crucial duties are better carried out late than never.”

Alito said the challengers’ assertion that immigrants had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is “especially hard to swallow.”

This totally makes sense to me, especially in light of the fact that some cities and states refuse to work with ICE because of their absurd sanctuary laws. How can ICE be expected to pick someone up within 24 hours when these cities refuse to notify the agency when a criminal immigrant is released from prison?

Here’s a video from CNN’s legal correspondent also explaining the decision:


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