Cite as: 533 U. S. 678 (2001)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
is a fact of international diplomacy that governments and their policies change; and if repatriation efforts can be revived, the Attorney General has an interest in ensuring the alien can report so the removal process can begin again.
Congress, moreover, was well aware of the difficulties confronting aliens who are removable but who cannot be repatriated. It made special provisions allowing them to be employed, a privilege denied to other deportable aliens. See § 1231(a)(7) (providing an "alien [who] cannot be removed due to the refusal of all countries designated by the alien or under this section to receive the alien" still remains eligible for employment in the United States). Congress' decision to ameliorate the condition of aliens subject to a final order of removal who cannot be repatriated, but who need not be detained, illustrates a balance in the statutory design. Yet the Court renders the other side of the balance meaningless. The risk to the community posed by a removable alien is a function of a variety of circumstances, circumstances that do not diminish just because the alien cannot be deported within some foreseeable time. Those circumstances include the seriousness of the alien's past offenses, his or her efforts at rehabilitation, and some indication from the alien that, given the real prospect of detention, the alien will conform his or her conduct. This is the purpose for the periodic review of detention status provided for by the regulations. See 8 CFR § 241.4 (2001). The Court's amendment of the statute reads out of the provision the congressional decision that dangerousness alone is a sufficient basis for detention, see ante, at 699 (citing 1 E. Coke, Institutes *70b), and reads out as well any meaningful structure for supervised release.
The majority is correct to observe that in United States v. Witkovich, 353 U. S. 194 (1957), the Court "read significant limitations into" a statute, ante, at 689, but that does not permit us to avoid the proper reading of the enactment now before us. In Witkovich, the Court construed former § 1252(d), which required an alien under a final order of de-
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