Court Rules Government Needs Reason To Imprison People

Federal judges ruled Thursday that the government must occasionally explain why it is imprisoning someone, dealing a severe setback to the administration’s effort to protect Americans from hearings, evidence and other procedural hazards. In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected President Donald Trump’s expansion of mandatory immigration detention, which sought to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested inside the United States, including longtime residents without criminal records. The ruling introduced a dangerous new standard under which a judge may ask whether a detainee poses a flight risk or threat to the public before the government keeps that person locked up indefinitely.

Judge Daniel Bress, a Trump appointee, joined the majority after reportedly committing the increasingly partisan act of reading the statute. The decision confirmed conservatives’ longstanding concern that lifetime judicial appointments can expose otherwise dependable judges to legal reasoning. “This is a terrible decision because now they want reasons before detention, and reasons are very expensive and mostly used by criminals,” Trump said. “We had the safest prisons when nobody asked who belonged in them or why they were there.” Administration officials maintained that Congress secretly authorized the sweeping detention power in 1996, then concealed it from every president for nearly three decades so Trump could discover it at exactly the moment he required unlimited authority.

Four other federal appeals courts have rejected the policy, while the 5th and 8th Circuits have endorsed it, leaving the country with a constitutional patchwork in which personal liberty may depend on geography, statutory interpretation and the government’s willingness to produce evidence. The dispute is expected to reach the Supreme Court, where the justices could decide whether bond hearings remain a basic safeguard or join warrants, legal counsel and complete sentences on the growing list of luxuries the executive branch can no longer afford. Until then, officials said, the public must endure the grave national-security risk of judges asking the government what it is doing. The nation’s safest jail is therefore the one in which the government never has to say why anyone is there.

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