The Supreme Court Just Took What Will Be the Blockbuster Case of the Term

Jurisprudence By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Shirin Ali? Oct 01, 20264:23 PM Immigration detention reaches the Supreme Court. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Allison Edge/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Andres Kudacki/Getty Images. Sign up for Executive Dysfunction, a weekly newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back—and keeps you posted on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted what is sure to be the blockbuster case of its 2026-2027 term. In Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, the justices will consider the Trump administration’s novel interpretation of federal immigration law that has given it legal cover to systematically detain any undocumented citizen who entered the U.S. without permission, regardless of criminal history and without assessing whether they are a public safety threat or pose a flight risk. Hundreds of lower court judges, Democrat and Republican appointed ones, have been rejecting the Trump administration’s application of the law for the past year, and yet it’s enabled immigration agents to continue to detain tens of thousands of people in detention centers all over the country, a practice that has enabled some of the Trump administration’s most inhumane immigration policies. The justices will consider head on if the Trump administration’s interpretation of two sections within the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 236 and 235(b), is lawful. The law gives federal authorities two options when faced with a deportation case of an undocumented person: Keep the noncitizen in federal custody while their immigration case goes through the courts, or release them on bond or parole. In recent history, all U.S. presidents choose to only apply the detention standard to recent border crossers, and any undocumented immigrants who have been living in the U.S. with established families and careers were eligible for bond or parole, so long as they were found not to be a public safety threat or flight risk. Last year, this standard drastically shifted, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, tasked with accomplishing the president’s mass deportation agenda, announced in July 2025 that the agency would begin detaining any and all undocumented immigrants facing removal orders, regardless of when they crossed the U.S. border, or if they had an established life here in the U.S. This interpretation has enabled ICE to round up undocumented immigrants en masse, with roughly 65,000 people in federal detention centers as of July 2026. About 70 percent of these detainees have no criminal convictions. And as countless immigrants were rounded up, the courts were flooded with immigration cases, to the tune of over 20,000, prompting lower court judges to assess the Trump administration’s legal strategy and overwhelmingly reject it. U.S. District Court Judge of the Southern District of New York Lewis Kaplan wrote an especially damning decision when approving an undocumented immigrants’ habeas corpus petition last year: “The subject of immigration—including who lawfully can come into or remain in the United States, from where, for what reasons, in what numbers, and by what legal processes—is a subject committed by the Constitution to the Congress.” He went on to emphasize that the Supreme Court has also previously affirmed that immigration is a subject Congress has complete legislative power over and that the executive branch must only “‘take Care that the Laws’—enacted by Congress—be faithfully executed.’” Kaplan continued by saying the Trump administration has every right to disagree with the way Congress wrote the INA, but the only way it can seek remedy is by going to Congress and asking to change the law, and muster up the necessary votes to pass new legislation. Recognizing the uphill battle that presents, the Trump administration chose not to go that route and instead applied a never-been-used-before interpretation of the INA in hopes of getting away with it for as long as possible, until the current Trump-friendly Supreme Court could weigh in. It’s anyone’s guess how the justices will rule on this case, but it’s worth spending a minute considering how they’ve been ruling on immigration cases the Trump administration has routed its way over the past year. The court’s conservative majority has thus far allowed the president to end Temporary Protected Status for over 300,000 immigrants, turn away people seeking asylum at U.S.-Mexico land borders, and racially profile people targeted for immigration arrests. But the justices have also curbed the president’s deportation agenda with decisions that stopped unlawful deportations to El Salvador through the Alien Enemies Act and allowed the longstanding birthright citizenship clause of the Constitution to stand. Will it allow the president to continue its mass detention policy? That is anyone’s guess, but the justices cannot come to that decision without also considering how the Trump administration’s interpretation of the INA has spun an astoundingly cruel immigration system. “Trump’s entire immigration arrest and detention policy regime *depends* upon its novel reading of the statutes,” Steve Vladeck, professor of law at Georgetown University and author of One First, noted on Bluesky. Because ICE has been given the greenlight to arrest and detain every single undocumented immigrant with a removal order, Americans’ neighborhoods have been subjected to violent immigration raids that have pulled families apart and left U.S. citizens dead. It has also led to ICE agents stalking courthouses all over the country, immediately arresting people who were following the law and showing up to court-mandated hearings. And upon arrest, these immigrants have been thrown into decrepit detention centers where they’ve faced physical violence, sexual abuse, unsanitary conditions, and spoiled food. As of September 22, 2026, at least 27 people have died in ICE custody this year, while in 2025 there were 33 detainee deaths. Making matters even worse, last month DHS began excluding immigrants detained with an outstanding removal order from the agency’s online detainee locator, making it nearly impossible for them to contact family or a lawyer. It’s consistently been said that the cruelty here is the point, that the Trump administration wants to make life for immigrants so painful, they will simply leave on their own accord. The U.S. Supreme Court now has an opportunity to set the record straight on whether America should be a country welcoming to immigrants, or one that wants to rid itself of every single one. Donald Trump Immigration Jurisprudence Supreme Court