Off to #SCOTUS.
#SCOTUS, Oct. 10, 2018. 
ACLU’s @WangCecillia, who argued Nielsen v. Preap, reconnects with her colleagues outside the court on Wednesday.
First take out of #SCOTUS arguments: It went much better for Preap than might have been expected.
The question before the court was whether there could be ANY time limit on when DHS needed to pick up a person under a law that provides for mandatory detention of people released from criminal custody, but the debate in arguments was over how quickly DHS had to do so.
Justice Gorsuch appeared to be very uncomfortable with the government’s position that it could do so 50 years later.
The question and debate really turned to whether the standard should be — and the differences between — “reasonable degree of immediacy,” the 9th Circuit’s rule, and “a reasonable time.” After Gorsuch had weighed in, the Chief Justice pushed this question to Preap’s lawyer, Wang.
The ACLU kept pressing for “a day,” and the government kept pressing for no limit — refusing to really give in at all to the shifting terms of the debate. It did not look like there would be majority support for either of those positions.
At the end of the gov’t’s rebuttal, Kavanaugh, who had appeared skeptical of the ACLU’s argument, asked Zachary Tripp, from the SG’s Office, what limit would be reasonable. Tripp replied that any limit would be “really profoundly problematic.”
My report from #SCOTUS —> Justices Express Skepticism About Government's Claim Of Unlimited Authority To Detain Some Immigrants buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisg…
