A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with an Iranian man who argued that his redetainment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was unlawful.
The Colorado-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2–1 ruling against the Trump administration’s arguments that a six-month detention period, as outlined by the Supreme Court, resets with each rearrest of an immigrant in removal proceedings.
Judge Carolyn McHugh, writing for the majority, said the high court’s 2001 decision in Zadvydas v. David ruled that the federal government cannot indefinitely detain removable noncitizens when deportation is not foreseeable in the near future.
“The government effectively asks us to treat Zadvydas as establishing a resettable six-month grace period that applies to any period of immigration detention, permitting the government to detain a noncitizen for any number of repeated six-month stints so long as these periods of detention are separated by some moment of freedom,” McHugh said….