Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-896_2135.pdf
Page Number: 16

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

3 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

Court decided that immigration authorities can detain an
alien only long enough to accomplish the “basic purpose [of] 
effectuating an alien’s removal” and must release him “once 
removal is no longer reasonably foreseeable.”  Id., at 697, 
699.  The “presumptively reasonable” detention period, the
Court declared, was six months.  Id., at 701.  The Court of-
fered no textual support for that (or any) length of time.  See 
ibid. 

As we later implied in Jennings, the constitutional-avoid-
ance canon cannot justify adoption of such an implausible 
construction of §1231(a)(6).  See 583 U. S., at ___ (slip op., 
at 12).  And, until we overrule Zadvydas, it will continue to 
invite  nothing  but  mischief. 
An  ill-defined,  quasi-
constitutional command of “reasonableness” inevitably en-
courages courts to fashion procedural rules with no basis in 
statutory  text.    We  confronted  that  mischief  in  Jennings, 
see 583 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 14) (reversing the Ninth
Circuit for “all but ignor[ing] the statutory text” and instead
“reading Zadvydas . . . as essentially granting a license to 
graft a time limit onto the text of §1225(b)”), and we do so
again today, compare ante, at 8, with Guerrero-Sanchez v. 
Warden York County Prison, 905 F. 3d 208, 223 (CA3 2018). 
We will be forced to engage in this jurisprudential whack-
a-mole until we recognize that Zadvydas was wrong the day
it was decided and thus does not warrant “stare decisis ef-
fect.”  Clark  v.  Martinez,  543  U. S.  371,  401  (2005) 
(THOMAS, J., dissenting); see also Gamble v. United States, 
587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., 
at 17) (“[W]e should not invoke stare decisis to uphold prec-
edents that are demonstrably erroneous”). 

* 
These three points notwithstanding, the Court’s opinion

* 

* 

correctly interprets §1231(a)(6).  Accordingly, I concur.