Supreme Court will decide on legality of indefinite immigration detention

Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that it will decide whether President Donald Trump's policy of detaining immigrants indefinitely while they await court hearings is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

The case will go on the justices' docket for the next term. Oral arguments will likely happen early in 2027, with a decision likely by summer.

The administration argues that it can detain people without bond if they're in the country unlawfully, no matter how long they've lived here.

The court said it wouldn't decide if the policy violates constitutional due process. It will only decide if it's legal based on the IIRIRA.

Until this administration, detainees could petition a judge for release. But under Trump, they haven't been allowed to do so, and detention rates have soared. There are now about 65,000 people in detention facilities in the United States.

About 70% of those detained have no criminal convictions, and many are legal immigrants waiting for their petitions to make it through governmental backlogs, advocates have said.

The majority of lower courts have sided with immigrants, who have argued that the federal law the Trump administration uses to hold them without a bond hearing only applies to those detained near the border.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in court papers that it's a "critically important question of immigration law." The policy removes a "perverse incentive" in which people who evade detention when they enter the United States get treated more leniently than those detained at the border.

The litigation, he said, is "disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law."

The American Civil Liberties Union said in court documents that the policy of keeping people detained is a "radical reinterpretation" of immigration law. They pointed out that some of the migrants were young children when they crossed the border.