[Previous entry: "Powell Sees Troops Returning this Year"] [Next entry: "Jordan's Guests, Deeply Palestinian and Deeply Skeptical"]

01/13/2005:

"Supreme Court Rejects Mariel Cubans' Detention"

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that federal law prohibits the open-ended detention of Cubans who entered the United States during the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and who, despite crimes later committed in the United States, cannot be deported because the Cuban government refuses to take them back.

Voting 7 to 2, the court applied to the deportable group of Mariel Cubans the same rights it found in federal law in a decision four years ago that barred the indefinite detention of a stateless immigrant, lawfully admitted to the United States, whose criminal record made him deportable but who had no place to go.

The Bush administration had argued that the decision in the earlier case did not apply to the Mariel group because, unlike the immigrant, Kestutis Zadvydas, admitted as a refugee from post-World War II Europe, the Cubans had never been granted formal admission to the United States. Instead, they received a humanitarian parole, which the administration said did not entitle them to the same protection when they violated the country's hospitality by committing crimes.

But writing for the majority on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia said that because the immigration statute itself made no such distinction, the court could not create one.
Full Article: nytimes.com

There are Marielitos who have been in 'indefinite detention' for 25 years after committing petty crimes.