Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

§1182(f ).  Brief for Respondents 39–40. 

If  anything,  the  drafting  history  suggests  the  opposite.
In  borrowing  “nearly  verbatim”  from  the  pre-existing
statute, Congress made one critical alteration—it removed 
the national emergency standard  that plaintiffs now seek
to  reintroduce  in  another  form.    Weighing  Congress’s 
conscious  departure  from  its  wartime  statutes  against  an
isolated  floor  statement,  the  departure  is  far  more  proba-
tive.  See  NLRB  v.  SW  General,  Inc.,  580  U. S.  ___,  ___ 
(2017)  (slip  op.,  at  16)  (“[F]loor  statements  by  individual
legislators  rank  among  the  least  illuminating  forms  of 
legislative  history.”).    When  Congress  wishes  to  condition
an exercise of executive authority on the President’s find-
ing of an exigency or crisis, it knows how to say just that. 
See,  e.g.,  16  U. S. C.  §824o–1(b);  42  U. S. C.  §5192;  50 
U. S. C.  §§1701,  1702.   Here,  Congress  instead  chose  to
condition  the  President’s  exercise  of  the  suspension 
authority on a different finding: that the entry of an alien 
or class of aliens would be “detrimental to the interests of 
the United States.” 

Plaintiffs  also  strive  to  infer  limitations  from  executive 
practice.  By their count, every previous suspension order 
under  §1182(f )  can  be  slotted  into  one  of  two  categories. 
The  vast  majority  targeted  discrete  groups  of  foreign
nationals  engaging  in  conduct  “deemed  harmful  by  the 
immigration  laws.”  And  the  remaining  entry  restrictions 
that  focused  on  entire  nationalities—namely,  President 
Carter’s response to the Iran hostage crisis and President
Reagan’s  suspension  of  immigration  from  Cuba—were,  in
their view, designed as a response to diplomatic emergen-
cies “that the immigration laws do not address.”  Brief for 
Respondents 40–41.

Even if we were willing to confine expansive language in 
light  of  its  past  applications,  the  historical  evidence  is
more  equivocal  than  plaintiffs  acknowledge.   Presidents 
have repeatedly suspended entry not because the covered