The #Resistance has been strong within the judicial branch to the very idea that Donald Trump is actual president. A year into his presidency courts are still litigating his authority to issue travel orders barring persons from failed states and state sponsors of terrorism from entering the United States. A federal judge in California has ruled that a memorandum issued by Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security creating the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (aka DACA aka DREAMer) program cannot be revoked by a new administration. This creates a whole new branch of government called the Actions-by-the-Obama-Administration-that-we-really-really-like branch.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling that gives a preview on how the Supreme Court will rule on the travel ban case and the DACA case.

This is the background:

In Jennings v. Rodriguez, the court will consider the question whether immigrants, like virtually any U.S. citizen placed in criminal or civil detention, must be guaranteed a bond hearing and possible release from custody. This case is a class-action challenge to lengthy immigration detentions without any opportunity for release on bond.

Brought to the United States as an infant, class representative Alejandro Rodriguez is a lawful permanent resident who had been employed as a dental assistant. Based on criminal convictions for possession of a controlled substance and “joyriding,” the U.S. government sought to remove Rodriguez from the United States. While Rodriguez was resisting removal, the government detained him for more than three years without a bond hearing. An immigration court ultimately granted Rodriguez “cancellation of removal,” and he remains in the United States.
…
After Rodriguez and the other class members brought suit challenging the government’s prolonged-detention practices, the district court entered an injunction requiring bond hearings for immigrant detainees. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed most of the injunction. Interpreting the immigrant-detention statutes to avoid constitutional problems, the appeals court held that immigration judges must provide a bond hearing to a class member at least every six months and that a noncitizen must be released from detention unless the government can establish by clear and convincing evidence that the noncitizen is a flight risk or a danger to public safety.

This is one of my objections to the DACA program. I don’t care how old Rodriguez was when he arrived here, when he took to drug possession and auto theft he needed to be punted.

Today the Supreme Court ruled and called bullsh** on the Ninth Circuit.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said immigrants held by the government and facing deportation are not entitled to a bond hearing even after months or years of detention.

The decision on the case, which had resulted in a deadlock before Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined the court, has taken on added importance with President Trump’s order of a crackdown on immigration violations.

In a splintered 5 to 3 decision, the court’s conservatives said that the relevant statute does not even “hint,” as Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote, at the broad reading of the right to bail hearings adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

That court had ruled that an immigrant held in detention must be given a bond hearing every six months and that detention beyond the initial six-month period is permitted only if the government proved that further detention is justified.

Alito rejected that standard, and said the more natural reading of the law at stake is that it authorizes detention “until the end of the applicable proceedings,” and that “there is no justification for any of the procedural requirements” that the appeals court added.

There are lots of moving parts in this but the big issue settled was the ability of the courts to order illegals released on bond. That decision is now totally in the hands of the government. The only claim that an illegal can make is that they are, in fact, a lawful resident and use habeas corpus proceedings to obtain release. The idea that illegals are entitled to due process in immigration hearings was effectively throttled today.

decision but the two to focus on are that it was 5-3 and the concurrence by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Not particularly surprising that Thomas thinks that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review the legality of prolonged immigration detention in this case. Notable that Trump's man Gorsuch is right there with him. pic.twitter.com/n4tmBlaSCD

— Anil Kalhan (@kalhan) February 27, 2018

Based on how the travel ban decision turned out the first time around and the jihad being carried out by a handful of federal judges on the administration, I think it is safe to say that which way that case is going. The DACA case is joke and it will be reversed, too.