Page:Kirstjen M. Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security, et al. v. Mony Preap, et al..pdf/24

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NIELSEN v. PREAP

Opinion of Alito, J.

span of less than three years (from January 2014 to September 2016), the Government recorded “a total of 21,205 declined [requests] in 567 counties in 48 states including the District of Columbia.” ICE, Fiscal Year 2016 ICE Enf. and Removal Operations Rep. 9. Nor was such local resistance unheard of when Congress enacted the language of §1226(c) in 1996. See S. Rep. No. 104–48, p. 28 (1995). Under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that Congress made the Secretary’s mandatory-detention authority vanish at the stroke of midnight after an alien’s release.

In short, the import of our case law is clear: Even if subsection (c) were the only font of authority to detain aliens without bond hearings, we could not read its “when… released” clause to defeat officials’ duty to impose such mandatory detention when it comes to aliens who are arrested well after their release.

Opinion of the Court

IV

Respondents protest that reading §1226(c) in the manner set forth here would render key language superfluous, lead to anomalies, and violate the canon of constitutional avoidance. We answer these objections in turn.

A

According to respondents, the Government’s reading of §1226(c) flouts the interpretive canon against surplusage—the idea that “every word and every provision is to be given effect [and that n]one should needlessly be given an interpretation that causes it to duplicate another provision or to have no consequence.” Scalia, Reading Law, at 174. See Kungys v. United States, 485 U. S. 759, 778 (1988) (plurality opinion of Scalia, J.) (citing the “cardinal rule of statutory interpretation that no provision should be construed to be entirely redundant”). Respondents’ surplusage argument has two focal points.

First, respondents claim that if they face mandatory