Jennings v. Rodriguez

583 U.S. 281, 138 S. Ct. 830, 200 L. Ed. 2d 122, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 1516
CourtSupreme Court of the United States
DecidedFebruary 27, 2018
Docket15-1204
StatusPublished
Cited by1,353 cases

This text of 583 U.S. 281 (Jennings v. Rodriguez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of the United States primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281, 138 S. Ct. 830, 200 L. Ed. 2d 122, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 1516 (2018).

Opinion

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2017 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

JENNINGS ET AL. v. RODRIGUEZ ET AL., INDIVIDUALLY AND ON BEHALF OF ALL OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 15–1204. Argued November 30, 2016—Reargued October 3, 2017—Decided February 27, 2018 Immigration officials are authorized to detain certain aliens in the course of immigration proceedings while they determine whether those aliens may be lawfully present in the country. For example, §1225(b) of Title 8 of the U. S. Code authorizes the detention of cer- tain aliens seeking to enter the country. Section 1225(b)(1) applies to aliens initially determined to be inadmissible due to fraud, misrepre- sentation, or lack of valid documentation, and to certain other aliens designated by the Attorney General in his discretion. Section 1225(b)(2) is a catchall provision that applies to most other appli- cants for admission not covered by §1225(b)(1). Under §1225(b)(1), aliens are normally ordered removed “without further hearing or re- view,” §1225(b)(1)(A)(i), but an alien indicating either an intention to apply for asylum or a credible fear of persecution, §1225(b)(1)(A)(ii), “shall be detained” while that alien’s asylum application is pending, §1225(b)(1)(B)(ii). Aliens covered by §1225(b)(2) in turn “shall be de- tained for a [removal] proceeding” if an immigration officer “deter- mines that [they are] not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled” to ad- mission. §1225(b)(2)(A). The Government is also authorized to detain certain aliens already in the country. Section 1226(a)’s default rule permits the Attorney General to issue warrants for the arrest and detention of these aliens pending the outcome of their removal proceedings. The Attorney General “may release” these aliens on bond, “[e]xcept as provided in subsection (c) of this section.” Section 1226(c) in turn states that the Attorney General “shall take into custody any alien” who falls into one of the enumerated categories involving criminal offenses and ter- 2 JENNINGS v. RODRIGUEZ

rorist activities, §1226(c)(1), and specifies that the Attorney General “may release” one of those aliens “only if the Attorney General de- cides” both that doing so is necessary for witness-protection purposes and that the alien will not pose a danger or flight risk, §1226(c)(2). After a 2004 conviction, respondent Alejandro Rodriguez, a Mexi- can citizen and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was detained pursuant to §1226 while the Government sought to re- move him. In May 2007, while still litigating his removal, Rodriguez filed a habeas petition, claiming that he was entitled to a bond hear- ing to determine whether his continued detention was justified. As relevant here, he and the class of aliens he represents allege that §§1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c) do not authorize “prolonged” deten- tion in the absence of an individualized bond hearing at which the Government proves by clear and convincing evidence that detention remains justified. The District Court entered a permanent injunc- tion, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Relying on the canon of consti- tutional avoidance, the Ninth Circuit construed §§1225(b) and 1226(c) as imposing an implicit 6-month time limit on an alien’s de- tention under those sections. After that point, the court held, the Government may continue to detain the alien only under the authority of §1226(a). The court then construed §1226(a) to mean that an alien must be given a bond hearing every six months and that detention beyond the initial 6-month period is permitted only if the Govern- ment proves by clear and convincing evidence that further detention is justified. Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded. 804 F. 3d 1060, reversed and remanded. JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part II, concluding that §§1225(b), 1226(a), and 1226(c) do not give de- tained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention. The Ninth Circuit misapplied the canon of constitu- tional avoidance in holding otherwise. Pp. 12–31. (a) The canon of constitutional avoidance “comes into play only when, after the application of ordinary textual analysis, the statute is found to be susceptible of more than one [plausible] construction.” Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371, 385. The Ninth Circuit’s interpre- tations of the provisions at issue, however, are implausible. Pp. 12– 13. (b) Read most naturally, §§1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) mandate detention of applicants for admission until certain proceedings have concluded. Until that point, nothing in the statutory text imposes a limit on the length of detention, and neither provision says anything about bond hearings. Pp. 13–19. (1) Nothing in the text of §1225(b)(1) or §1225(b)(2) hints that Cite as: 583 U. S. ____ (2018) 3

those provisions have an implicit 6-month time limit on the length of detention. Respondents must show that this is a plausible reading in order to prevail under the canon of constitutional avoidance, but they simply invoke the canon without making any attempt to defend their reading. The Ninth Circuit also all but ignored the statutory text, relying instead on Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U. S. 678, as authority for grafting a time limit onto §1225(b)’s text. There, this Court invoked the constitutional-avoidance canon, construing §1231(a)(6)—which pro- vides than an alien subject to a removal order “may be detained” be- yond the section’s 90-day removal period—to mean that the alien may not be detained beyond “a period reasonably necessary to secure removal,” id., at 699, presumptively six months, id., at 701. The Court detected ambiguity in the statutory phrase “may be detained” and noted the absence of any explicit statutory limit on the length of permissible detention following the entry of an order of removal. Several material differences distinguish the provisions at issue in this case from Zadvydas’s interpretation of §1231(a)(6). To start, the provisions here, unlike §1231(a)(6), mandate detention for a specified period of time: until immigration officers have finished “consid- er[ing]” the asylum application, §1225(b)(1)(B)(ii), or until removal proceedings have concluded, §1225(b)(2)(A). Section 1231(a)(6) also uses the ambiguous “may,” while §§1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) use the une- quivocal mandate “shall be detained.” There is also a specific provi- sion authorizing temporary parole from §1225(b) detention “for ur- gent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” §1182(d)(5)(A), but no similar release provision applies to §1231(a)(6). That express exception implies that there are no other circumstances under which aliens detained under §1225(b) may be released. Pp. 14–17. (2) Respondents also claim that the term “for” in §§1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) mandates detention only until the start of applicable pro- ceedings. That is inconsistent with the meanings of “for”—“[d]uring [or] throughout,” 6 Oxford English Dictionary 26, and “with the object or purpose of,” id., at 23—that make sense in the context of the statu- tory scheme as a whole. Nor does respondents’ reading align with the historical use of “for” in §1225. Pp. 17–19. (c) Section 1226(c)’s language is even clearer.

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583 U.S. 281, 138 S. Ct. 830, 200 L. Ed. 2d 122, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 1516, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jennings-v-rodriguez-scotus-2018.