At Immigration Argument, Justice Kavanaugh Takes Hard Line.

'A Supreme Court argument on Wednesday over the detention of immigrants during deportation proceedings seemed to expose a divide between President Trump’s two appointees, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

The question in the case was whether federal authorities must detain immigrants who had committed crimes, often minor ones, no matter how long ago they were released from criminal custody. Justice Kavanaugh said a 1996 federal law required detention even years later, without an opportunity for a bail hearing.

“What was really going through Congress’s mind in 1996 was harshness on this topic,” he said.'

But Justice Gorsuch suggested that mandatory detentions of immigrants long after they completed their sentences could be problematic. “Is there any limit on the government’s power?” he asked.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer pressed the point, asking a lawyer for the federal government whether it could detain “a person 50 years later, who is on his death bed, after stealing some bus transfers” without a bail hearing “even though in this country a triple ax murderer is given a bail hearing.” . .

In April, Justice Gorsuch joined the court’s four liberal members in a 5-to-4 decision striking down a law that allowed the government to deport some immigrants who had committed serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. Some of his questions on Wednesday in the new case, Nielsen v. Preap, No. 16-1363, left open the possibility of a similar alliance.

The 1996 law includes a contested phrase. Its says federal authorities “shall take into custody any alien” convicted of certain crimes, some serious and some minor, “when the alien is released.” The key word is “when.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/us/politics/kavanaugh-immigration-supreme-court-case.html

INTERESTING possible divide between Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.