Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

In a major victory for the Trump regime's coming mass detainment and deportation strategy, the Roberts court gave the green light for permanent detainment for non-US citizens with criminal records with no due process whatsoever.

The Supreme Court held on Tuesday that the government can detain -- without a bond hearing -- immigrants with past criminal records, even if years have passed since they were released from criminal custody. 

The case centered on whether detention without a bond hearing must occur promptly upon an immigrant's release from criminal custody or whether it can happen months or even years later when the individual has resettled into society. The statute says simply that the detention can occur "when the alien is released" from custody. 

The court voted 5-4 in favor of the government. 

The challenge was brought by lawful permanent residents who committed a crime that could lead to their removal. 

In his opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito said that the immigrants in the case had argued they were "owed bond hearings" in order to argue for their release. Alito said that the law did not support their argument. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately to say that the ruling was based entirely on the language of the statute at hand. He said it would be "odd" to interpret the statute as mandating the detention of certain "non citizens" who posed a serious risk of danger of flight, but "nonetheless" allow them to remain free during their removal proceedings if the executive branch failed "to immediately detain them upon their release from criminal custody." 

"The court correctly holds that the Executive Branch's detention of the particular non citizens here remained mandatory even though the Executive Branch did not immediately detain them." 

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the dissent, and took the unusual step of reading the opinion from the bench. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. 

"It runs the gravest risk of depriving those whom the Government has detained of one of the oldest and most important of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms: the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law."

Indefinite detainment without due process for undocumented with criminal records is important, because the next step is for the Trump regime to then say that the act of being in the country illegally constitutes a national security threat, and that opens up the legalization of mass roundups of millions of undocumented in the US to be processed and deported, while the rest are simply kept in government internment camps.

SCOTUS laying down precedent to say that due process doesn't exist for a class of people living in the country is exactly the opening that the GOP has been looking for over the last several decades.  The ultimate endgame of this of course is to then argue that if due process doesn't apply to non-citizens, then the Trump regime can revoke that citizenship.  Expand the class to include your political enemies, in other words.

And then the real nightmare begins.