Cite as: 533 U. S. 678 (2001)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
for which he ultimately served time. Id., at 708. The INS eventually revoked Rosales' immigration parole, ordered him deported, and held him pending deportation, subject to periodic consideration for parole under the Cuban Review Plan. See 8 CFR § 212.12(g)(2) (2001). In reasoning remarkably similar to the majority's, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the indefinite detention of Rosales violated Fifth Amendment due process rights, because "the government has offered . . . no credible proof that there is any possibility that Cuba may accept Rosales's return anytime in the foreseeable future." 238 F. 3d, at 725. This result—that Mariel Cubans and other illegal, inadmissible aliens will be released notwithstanding their criminal history and obvious flight risk—would seem a necessary consequence of the majority's construction of the statute.
The majority's confidence that the Judiciary will handle these matters "with appropriate sensitivity," ante, at 696, 700, allows no meaningful category to confine or explain its own sweeping rule, provides no justification for wresting this sovereign power away from the political branches in the first place, and has no support in judicially manageable standards for deciding the foreseeability of removal.
It is curious that the majority would approve of continued detention beyond the 90-day period, or, for that matter, during the 90-day period, where deportation is not reasonably foreseeable. If the INS cannot detain an alien because he is dangerous, it would seem irrelevant to the Constitution or to the majority's presumption that the INS has detained the alien for only a little while. The reason detention is permitted at all is that a removable alien does not have the same liberty interest as a citizen does. The Court cannot bring itself to acknowledge this established proposition. Likewise, it is far from evident under the majority's theory why the INS can condition and supervise the release of aliens who are not removable in the reasonably foreseeable future, or why "the alien may no doubt be returned to custody upon
717
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