Really? We're doing this
twice in one exchange? Shall we review what you said?
That very clearly argues as if the subject of contention is
whether or not they can be issued, as you argue
they wouldn't exist at all if you were wrong.
Again, very clearly and unambiguously is arguing as if the existence of
the detainers themselves was the point of criticism, as it presumes that a ruling of unconstitutionality would
mandate that ICE stop using them
at all.
Again, quite clearly treats
their very issuance as the point of criticism, as it again treats their usage
at all as rendering it self-evident that they are not unconstitutional, and indeed even directly states that "either
all of them are or
none of them are", which once again only makes sense as a statement if you're arguing against the idea that the detainers
themselves were the issue.
So no. It's not that I'm failing to read what you say.
Let me take a moment to remind you that I already provided case law on this point showing courts have repeatedly (across more than a dozen decisions over the course of a decade) held that detaining someone solely on an ICE detainer beyond their otherwise lawful release violates the Fourth Amendment.
https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/immig_detainer_legal_update-20180724.pdf
Your argument keeps shifting to a glorified "it doesn't count unless the Supreme Court says so," but
that is not how the federal judiciary works.
Appellate court decisions are legally binding within their jurisdiction
unless stayed or reversed. A Court of Appeals decision is controlling law for all district courts in that circuit
unless overturned by the Supreme Court or by the court sitting en banc.
The Supreme Court does not have to "approve" lower court rulings for them to have legal effect. A ruling is effective when the court issues it. If the losing party disagrees, their remedy is to appeal. If the appeal succeeds, the ruling is reversed. If it does not, the ruling stands.
So the correct framing is not "the court's ruling that this is unconstitutional is not valid until SCOTUS says so," but "this is binding law
unless and until a higher court changes it." Supreme Court review is a potential
override mechanism, not a prerequisite for validity
More fundamentally, your theory does not make sense as a matter of appellate procedure. The Supreme Court only hears appeals (and even then only the cases it chooses to hear, which amount to <1% of cases appealed to them). If lower-court constitutional rulings do not count until the Supreme Court approves them, then every constitutional ruling would exist in a state of legal limbo until SCOTUS intervened. But that is not how appeals work. Appeals exist precisely because lower-court rulings already have legal force and the losing party wants them overturned.
In these cases, courts ruled that holding someone past their release date solely on the basis of an ICE detainer unsupported by a judicial warrant was unlawful. If ICE or the affected government agency disagreed, the burden is on them to appeal and obtain a reversal.
That is not a matter of opinion; it is the basic structure of the appellate system.
The Supreme Court is not some isolated body that independently decides constitutional questions from scratch. It sits at the top of the appellate system.
Its primary role is reviewing decisions made by lower courts. If lower-court rulings that drew conclusions on constitutional lines were non-binding and effectively didn't count - as your argument assumes - until the Supreme Court approves them, then this system would be
impossible because the lack of legal effect from those cases would mean that there would also be nothing for the losing party to appeal.
That's the thing you're missing:
The Supreme Court operates by hearing appeals from lower-court rulings, and even then only choose to hear a tiny fraction of the cases that are appealed to them. Which is precisely what makes your "Oh no, that doesn't count because the Supreme Court hasn't said it's unconstitutional" argument not only wrong but obviously so. Because not only is it historically and legally illiterate, it collapses under even the most token of scrutiny. Because it would render the cases that you insist need Supreme Court approval
unable to qualify for Supreme Court review in the first place.
Because if the rulings that entail questions of constitutionality cannot have legal weight until the Supreme Court rules on them, then the cases wouldn't have the necessary weight to be appealed and therefore
could not be put before the Supreme Court to rule on them.
