Catholics weigh in on Supreme Court cases - immigration deportation and religious organizations meeting on school grounds, United States - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 23, 2001

By CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

The Supreme Court will consider the U.S. policy of indefinitely detaining immigrants who cannot be deported when it hears a combined oral argument on two cases. The argument is scheduled for Feb. 21, too late to be reported in this issue of NCR.

The cases, involving immigrants Kestutis Zadvydas and Kim Ho Ma, illustrate the effects of the policy of jailing immigrants when there is no place to which they can be deported.

In another case being heard a week later, the Supreme Court will consider whether a public school can exclude a club from using classrooms after hours because the club's activities are "too religious." In Good News Club vs. Milford Central School, the court will hear oral arguments about the disagreement Feb. 28.

In both immigration cases, Zadvydas and Ma, who are legal immigrants, got into trouble with the law and served their time in prison. Upon release, both were ordered deported, though legally there is no place to which the United States can send them. With deportation orders pending, both men were kept locked up in federal custody, with no hope of release in sight.

Eventually, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Immigration and Naturalization Service policy is unconstitutional, and Ma was released. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the opposite way, and Zadvydas is still in detention -- six years after he completed his two-year prison term for drug possession.

The Catholic Legal Immigration Network has been following the cases closely, filing a brief in one of the lower courts of appeal and an amicus or friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court. The Catholic immigration network documented cases like that of Zadvydas and Ma in a report released last year, "The Needless Detention of Immigrants in the United States."

According to INS policy, people with deportation orders who have no country willing to accept them are held indefinitely in INS detention. Although there are a handful of INS-run detention centers in the country, most INS detainees are kept in county jails and state or federal prisons operating under contract to the INS.

According to the brief filed jointly by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network and several other immigrant and legal organizations, the INS detains as many as 5,000 people who cannot be deported for various reasons.

In the case involving the Good News Club, the school district in Milford, N.Y., rejected the group's request to meet on school property on the grounds that, unlike other outside organizations using the school, the Good News Club's activities were "the equivalent of religious worship." Other groups, such as Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, promote moral values rather than religion, the district said. Good New Clubs are community youth groups sponsored by the national missionary organization Child Evangelism Fellowship.

Organizations weighing in with friend-of-the-court briefs include a group of 20 theologians and religion scholars of various denominations. Among participants are Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, and law and philosophy professors from the University of Notre Dame.

That group said the district's action amounts to picking and choosing among religious viewpoints to establish whose activities are about promoting "the good" and whose are about "God's will."