Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/543/371/opinion.html
Timestamp: 2017-02-28 05:50:14
Document Index: 50769283

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1182', '§1182', '§1182', '§1231', '§1367', '§1367', '§1231', '§1367', '§1231', '§1182', '§1182', '§1231', '§441', '§251', '§1182', '§1182', '§1253', '§1231', '§212', '§1231', '§1231', '§1537', '§1367', '§1367', '§1367', '§1231', '§412', '§1226']

Clark v. Martinez (Opinion by Justice Scalia) :: 543 U.S. 371 (2005) :: Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center Log In
The Attorney General revoked Martinez’s parole in December 2000. Martinez was taken into custody by the INS, and removal proceedings were commenced against him. Pet. for Cert. in No. 03–878, at 8. An Immigration Judge found him inadmissible by reason of his prior convictions, §1182(a)(2)(B), and lack of sufficient documentation, §1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I), and ordered him removed to Cuba. Martinez did not appeal. Pet. for Cert. in No. 03–878, at 8. The INS continued to detain him after expiration of the 90-day removal period, and he remained in custody until he was released pursuant to the District Court order that was affirmed by the Court of Appeals’ decision on review here. Id., at 9. Benitez’s parole was revoked in 1993 (shortly after he was imprisoned for his convictions of that year), and the INS immediately initiated removal proceedings against him. In December 1994, an Immigration Judge determined Benitez to be excludable and ordered him deported under §§1182(a)(2)(B) and 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I) (1994 ed. and Supp. V).[Footnote 2] 337 F. 3d, at 1291. Benitez did not seek further review. At the completion of his state prison term, the INS took him into custody for removal, and he continued in custody after expiration of the 90-day removal period. Ibid. In September 2003, Benitez received notification that he was eligible for parole, contingent on his completion of a drug-abuse treatment program. Letter from Paul D. Clement, Acting Solicitor General, to William K. Suter, Clerk of Court, 1 (Nov. 3, 2004). Benitez completed the program while his case was pending before this Court, and shortly after completion was paroled for a period of one year. Ibid. On October 15, 2004, two days after argument in this Court, Benitez was released from custody to sponsoring family members.[Footnote 3] Id., at 2.
“[T]he majority’s logic might be that inadmissible and removable aliens can be treated differently. Yet it is not a plausible construction of §1231(a)(6) to imply a time limit as to one class but not to another. The text does not admit of this possibility. As a result, it is difficult to see why ‘[a]liens who have not yet gained initial admission to this country would present a very different question.’ ” Zadvydas, 533 U. S., at 710–711 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). The Zadvydas dissent later concluded that the release of “Mariel Cubans and other illegal, inadmissible aliens . . . would seem a necessary consequence of the majority’s construction of the statute.” Id., at 717 (emphasis added). Tellingly, the Zadvydas majority did not negate either charge.
The dissent, on the other hand, relies on our recent cases interpreting 28 U. S. C. §1367(d). Raygor v. Regents of Univ. of Minn., 534 U. S. 533 (2002), held that this provision does not include, in its tolling of limitations periods, claims against States that have not waived their immunity from suit in federal court, because the statutory language fails to make “ ‘unmistakably clear,’ ” as it must in provisions subjecting States to suit, that such States were covered. Id., at 543–546. A subsequent decision, Jinks v. Richland County, 538 U. S. 456 (2003), held that the tolling provision does apply to claims against political subdivisions of States, since the requirement of the unmistakably clear statement did not apply to those entities. Id., at 466. This progression of decisions does not remotely establish that §1367(d) has two different meanings, equivalent to the unlimited-detention/limited-detention meanings of §1231(a)(6) urged upon us here. They hold that the single and unchanging disposition of §1367(d) (the tolling of limitations periods) does not apply to claims against States that have not consented to be sued in federal court.[Footnote 6] We also reject the Government’s argument that, under Zadvydas, §1231(a)(6) “authorizes detention until it approaches constitutional limits.” Brief for Petitioners in No. 03–878, at 27–28; Brief for Respondent in No. 03–7434, at 27–28. The Government provides no citation to support that description of the case—and none exists. Zadvydas did not hold that the statute authorizes detention until it approaches constitutional limits; it held that, since interpreting the statute to authorize indefinite detention (one plausible reading) would approach constitutional limits, the statute should be read (in line with the other plausible reading) to authorize detention only for a period consistent with the purpose of effectuating removal. 533 U. S., at 697–699. If we were, as the Government seems to believe, free to “interpret” statutes as becoming inoperative when they “approach constitutional limits,” we would be able to spare ourselves the necessity of ever finding a statute unconstitutional as applied. And the doctrine that statutes should be construed to contain substantive dispositions that do not raise constitutional difficulty would be a thing of the past; no need for such caution, since—whatever the substantive dispositions are—they become inoperative when constitutional limits are “approached.” That is not the legal world we live in. The canon of constitutional avoidance comes into play only when, after the application of ordinary textual analysis, the statute is found to be susceptible of more than one construction; and the canon functions as a means of choosing between them. See, e.g., Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224, 237–238 (1998); United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 408 (1909). In Zadvydas, it was the statute’s text read in light of its purpose, not some implicit statutory command to avoid approaching constitutional limits, which produced the rule that the Secretary may detain aliens only for the period reasonably necessary to bring about their removal. See 533 U. S., at 697–699.
oral argument, the Government sought to justify its continued detention of these aliens on the authority of §1182(d)(5)(A).[Footnote 7] Even assuming that an alien who is subject to a final order of removal is an “alien applying for admission” and therefore eligible for parole under this provision, we find nothing in this text that affirmatively authorizes detention, much less indefinite detention. To the contrary, it provides that, when parole is revoked, “the alien shall . . . be returned to the custody from which he was paroled and thereafter his case shall continue to be dealt with in the same manner as that of any other applicant for admission.” §1182(d)(5)(A) (emphasis added). The manner in which the case of any other applicant would be “dealt with” beyond the 90-day removal period is prescribed by §1231(a)(6), which we interpreted in Zadvydas and have interpreted above.
Footnote 1 The authorities described herein as having been exercised by the Attorney General and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) now reside in the Secretary of Homeland Security (hereinafter Secretary) and divisions of his Department (Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services). See Homeland Security Act of 2002, §§441(2), 442(a)(3), 451(b), 116 Stat. 2192, 6 U. S. C. §§251(2), 252(a)(3), 271(b) (2000 ed., Supp. II).
Footnote 2 Before the 1996 enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 110 Stat. 3009, aliens ineligible to enter the country were denominated “excludable” and ordered “deported.” 8 U. S. C. §§1182(a), 1251(a)(1)(A) (1994 ed.); see Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U. S. 21, 25–26 (1982). Post-IIRIRA, such aliens are said to be “inadmissible” and held to be “removable.” 8 U. S. C. §§1182(a), 1229a(e)(2) (2000 ed.).
Footnote 3 Despite Benitez’s release on a 1-year parole, this case continues to present a live case or controversy. If Benitez is correct, as his suit contends, that the Government lacks the authority to continue to detain him, he would have to be released, and could not be taken back into custody unless he violated the conditions of release (in which case detention would be authorized by 8 U. S. C. §1253), or his detention became necessary to effectuate his removal (in which case detention would once again be authorized by §1231(a)(6)). His current release, however, is not only limited to one year, but subject to the Secretary’s discretionary authority to terminate. See 8 CFR §212.12(h) (2004) (preserving discretion to revoke parole). Thus, Benitez “continue[s] to have a personal stake in the outcome” of his petition. Lewis v. Continental Bank Corp., 494 U. S. 472, 477–478 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Footnote 4 The dissent is quite wrong in saying, post, at 4, that the Zadvydas Court’s belief that §1231(a)(6) did not apply to all aliens is evidenced by its statement that it did not “consider terrorism or other special circumstances where special arrangements might be made for forms of preventive detention,” 533 U. S., at 695. The Court’s interpretation of §1231(a)(6) did not affect the detention of alien terrorists for the simple reason that sustained detention of alien terrorists is a “special arrangement” authorized by a different statutory provision, 8 U. S. C. §1537(b)(2)(C). See Zadvydas, 533 U. S., at 697.
Footnote 5 Contrary to the dissent’s contentions, post, at 8, our decision in Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52 (1997), is perfectly consistent with this principle of construction. In Salinas, the Court rejected the petitioner’s invocation of the avoidance canon because the text of the statute was “unambiguous on the point under consideration.” 522 U. S., at 60. For this reason, the Court squarely addressed and rejected any argument that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to the petitioner. Id., at 61 (holding that, under the construction adopted by the Court, “the statute is constitutional as applied in this case”). Footnote 6 The dissent concedes this is so but argues, post, at 7–8, that, because the Court reached this conclusion “only after analyzing whether the constitutional doubts in Raygor applied to the county defendant” in Jinks, post, at 8, we must engage in the same quasi-constitutional analysis here before applying the construction adopted in Zadvydas to the aliens in these cases. This overlooks a critical distinction between the question before the Court in Jinks and the one before us today. In Jinks, the county could not claim the aid of Raygor itself because Raygor held only that §1367(d) did not include suits against nonconsenting States; instead, the county argued by analogy to Raygor that, absent a clear statement of congressional intent, §1367(d) should be construed not to include suits against political subdivisions of States. And thus the Court in Jinks considered not whether Raygor’s interpretation of §1367(d) was directly controlling but whether the constitutional concerns that justified the requirement of a clear statement in Raygor applied as well in the case of counties. In the present cases, by contrast, the aliens ask simply that the interpretation of §1231(a)(6) announced in Zadvydas be applied to them. This question does not compel us to compare analogous constitutional doubts; it simply requires that we determine whether the statute construed by Zadvydas permits any distinction to be drawn between aliens who have been admitted and aliens who have not. Footnote 7 Section 1182(d)(5)(A) reads as follows:
Footnote 8 That Congress has the capacity to do so is demonstrated by its reaction to our decision in Zadvydas. Less than four months after the release of our opinion, Congress enacted a statute which expressly authorized continued detention, for a period of six months beyond the removal period (and renewable indefinitely), of any alien (1) whose removal is not reasonably foreseeable and (2) who presents a national security threat or has been involved in terrorist activities. Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT ACT), §412(a), 115 Stat. 350 (enacted Oct. 26, 2001) (codified at 8 U. S. C. §1226a(a)(6) (2000 ed., Supp. II)).