CV NEWS FEED // In a rare 5-4 split Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants granted voluntary departure must be given extra time to leave the country if their 60-day deadline falls on a weekend or federal holiday.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, siding the Court’s three liberal justices as well as Chief Justice John Roberts.
The ruling overturns a lower court decision and sides with Hugo Monsalvo Velázquez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who missed his Sunday departure deadline after filing a motion to reopen his case the following Monday.
Gorsuch pointed to long-established administrative practices and Congress’s 1996 immigration reforms in his decision.
“When Congress adopts a new law against the backdrop of a ‘long-standing administrative construction,’ the Court generally presumes the new provision works in harmony with what came before,” he wrote.
“Since at least the 1950s, immigration regulations have provided that when calculating deadlines, the term ‘day’ carries its specialized meaning by excluding Sundays and legal holidays (and later Saturdays) if a deadline would otherwise fall on one of those days.”
The Court’s four other conservative justices–Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett–dissented.
Alito sharply criticized the ruling, warning that it undermines the enforcement of immigration laws.
“The Court is sympathetic to petitioner’s plight, but… no matter how such a deadline is calculated, there will always be those who happen to miss it by a day or so. And that will be true whether the deadline is always 60 days or is sometimes extended to 61, 62, or 63 days,” Alito wrote.
“There will always be a sympathetic pro se alien who is a day or two late,” he continued. “Unless the Court is willing to extend the statutory deadline indefinitely, it would presumably be forced to say in such cases that a day too late is just too bad.”
Meanwhile, Thomas argued the Court lacked jurisdiction and should have sent the case back to the lower court. Barrett questioned whether Monsalvo’s appeal challenged a valid part of his removal order.
The ruling comes just weeks before the Court is set to hear oral arguments in a highly anticipated case over President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
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