Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

See Also

See also

Chinese detentions in New York;

Deportation;

Haitian immigrants;

Helsinki Watch report on U.S. refugee policy;

Immigration and Naturalization Service;

Naturalization;

September 11 terrorist attacks.

Issues in U.S. Immigration

Zadvydas v. Davis

by Thomas Tandy Lewis

The Case: U.S. Supreme Court ruling on detention and deportation of aliens

Date: June 28, 2001

Immigration issues: Civil rights and liberties; Court cases

Significance: In a decision that would have an immediate impact on thousands of people, the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not detain deportable aliens indefinitely simply because no other country is willing to accept them.

Kestutis Zadvydas, a person of Lithuanian ancestry, was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and entered the United States as a child. After he built a long criminal record, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) ordered him to be deported to his country of citizenship. However, both Lithuania and Germany rejected his citizenship claims and refused to accept him. After being detained by the U.S. government for more than five years, Zadvydas claimed that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibited the INS from indefinitely detaining him without condemnation in a criminal trial. The INS justified the detention by reference to an interpretation of a 1996 federal statute. A federal appeals court refused to exercise judicial review over the immigration policies of the legislative and executive branches.

By a 5–4 margin, the Supreme Court repudiated the idea of allowing the INS unlimited discretion for detaining Zadvydas and others in similar circumstances. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer emphasized that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment put “important constitutional limitations” on legislative and executive policies toward all persons who had entered the country, even if they were in the country illegally. After a “reasonable” period of six months, if deportation appeared unlikely in the foreseeable future, he wrote that the INS had the burden of showing an adequate reason for keeping the person in custody. He observed that preventive detention would be appropriate when there was sufficient evidence that a person was dangerous to society.

Further Reading

1 

Bischoff, Henry. Immigration Issues. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.

2 

Blake, Nicholas J., and Raza Husain. Immigration, Asylum and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

3 

Legomsky, Stephen H. Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy. 3d ed. New York: Foundation Press, 2002.

4 

LeMay, Michael C., and Elliott Robert Barkan, eds. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Zadvydas V. Davis." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0219.
APA 7th
Lewis, T. T. (2015). Zadvydas v. Davis. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Zadvydas V. Davis." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.