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The 5-3 decision in Jennings v. Rodriguez was written by Justice Samuel Alito and holds that some immigrants do not have a statutory right to bond hearings under US law. The Ninth Circuit is now tasked with evaluating whether they have a constitutional right to bond hearings. It previously ruled that certain immigrants have a right to bond hearings every six months and that the government must provide “clear and convincing evidence” to block a detainee from being released.
The case focuses on three groups of immigrant detainees: asylum seekers fleeing persecution, people fighting deportation after serving a criminal sentence, and others who believe they have a right to enter the United States. Members of those groups spent one year in detention on average and, in the case of one individual cited in the case, nearly four years. There is now a backlog of more than 660,000 cases in immigration courts, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan project that tracks government data.
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