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Related: • Supreme Court: Immigrants in Limbo Can't Be Jailed Indefinitely • Emil Amok: Immigrants -- Your Liberty Interests Affirmed Here

Supreme Court: Immigrants in Limbo Can’t Be Jailed Indefinitely

By Larry Margasak/AP

Immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States cannot be imprisoned indefinitely just because the government has no place to send them, the Supreme Court ruled on June 28.

In the second victory in a week for immigrants who commit crimes, the court said open-ended jailing cannot be justified under the U.S. Constitution.

The vote was 5-4, the same margin by which the court ruled on June 25 that legal aliens convicted of certain crimes are entitled to a court hearing before they can be deported.

Last Thursday’s ruling affects about 3,000 deportable immigrants whose home countries either will not accept them or no longer exist. All were convicted of serious crimes, have served their sentences and are now in legal limbo.

The decision is a victory for civil rights groups that argued that keeping someone behind bars after they have completed their sentence violates the Constitution’s guarantee of due process under the law.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, of the majority opinion, rejected the government’s argument that a criminal alien’s liberty is greatly diminished by his or her lack of a legal right to live in the country.

“The choice ... is not between imprisonment and the alien living at large,” Breyer said. “It is between imprisonment and supervision under release conditions that may not be violated.

“We believe that an alien’s liberty interest is, at the least, strong enough to raise a serious question as to whether ... the Constitution permits detention that is indefinite and potentially permanent.”

Breyer was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist dissented.

The ruling combined two separate cases with the same issue.

Breyer said Congress recognized a six-month detention period for those facing removal. “We recognize the period,” he said.

After the six months, once the alien shows there is no significant likelihood of removal in the foreseeable future, the government must provide evidence to rebut that showing to further detain the immigrant.

An alien could be imprisoned until it is determined there is no significant likelihood of removal in the foreseeable future, the ruling said.

Some of the affected immigrants are stateless, and many more were born in countries such as Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, that have no repatriation agreements with the United States.