Supreme Court Appears Split in Immigration Case Over Notice Requirements

The Supreme Court appeared divided on Monday over what counted as proper notice for the government to give to people facing deportation hearings.

The argument, which lasted nearly two hours, centered on whether undocumented immigrants should be allowed to challenge deportation orders if their initial notice to appear in court failed to list a time and date for the hearing.

The dispute focused on how to interpret federal immigration law, but the broader debate over the country’s immigration system, in which record numbers of migrants are entering the country, took center stage from the start.

The lawyer for the government, Charles L. McCloud, contended that a decision in favor of the undocumented immigrants “threatens to unsettle hundreds of thousands” of deportation orders the courts have issued for “nearly three decades.” He predicted “an avalanche” of cases “could be injected back into the immigration system.”

The lawyer representing the immigrants in the two consolidated cases, Easha Anand, argued the government was “flouting the plain text” of federal immigration law by failing to give people court notices citing the date and time of their hearings.

Despite the government’s argument that “a parade of horribles” would follow if the court sided with the immigrants, Ms. Anand said that a majority of noncitizens were unlikely to push to reopen their cases “because the best they get is another hearing.”

In previous cases on similar issues, she added, the justices had rejected the government’s arguments about increased legal challenges. She said that the court had found that “raw consequentialist calculations have no place” when “those consequences are a function of the government ignoring the text of the statute over many cases and many years.”

Under federal immigration law, government officials must give people notice to appear for a deportation hearing, including where the hearing will be held and when, part of the Constitution’s guarantee of due process.

The petitioners in the cases before the court, Campos-Chaves v. Garland and Garland v. Singh and Mendez-Colin, Nos. 22-674 and 22-884, argue that for years, the Department of Homeland Security has used a flawed process that alerts people to that information piecemeal.

The court’s decision in this instance is likely to resolve a split among federal appeals courts on how to handle such cases.

At the center of the case is Moris Esmelis Campos-Chaves, who fled El Salvador. On Jan. 24, 2005, he entered the United States, wading across the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas.

Mr. Campos-Chaves, who works as a landscaper, lives with his wife and their two children, who were both born in the United States.

In January 2005, Mr. Campos-Chaves received a notice for an immigration hearing. But the document did not include the time and date. That May, the immigration court mailed a notice with the details of his hearing, scheduled for September, to a Texas address that he had given to immigration officials. When he failed to show up at the hearing, an immigration judge ordered him deported.

In September 2018, he asked an immigration court to reopen his case, arguing that he had never received the details of his hearing and that his children would face exceptional hardship if he were deported.

After the judge denied his request, he appealed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with the lower court.

Mr. Campos-Chaves asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. His case is joined with those of Varinder Singh, an Indian citizen who had crossed into the United States by climbing a fence at the Mexican border, and Raul Daniel Mendez-Colín, a citizen of Mexico who crossed the Arizona border by car.

The petitioners say the government provides undocumented immigrants with a form notice telling them that they will have a hearing. But the details of that hearing are provided later — sometimes years later — in a second notice from the immigration court.

Lawyers for the government argue that the notices, taken together, constitute proper notice of court proceedings.

The court’s liberal justices, along with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, appeared critical of this interpretation.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned Mr. McCloud on the government’s interpretation that its second notice, the first time an undocumented immigrant would receive the time and date of a court proceeding, was merely changing the date.

“So change is no change?” she said. “Meaning you haven’t set a time and place, and we’re going to change that and set what? Another no time and place?”

Mr. McCloud responded that the government had already told the undocumented immigrant there would be a hearing and had merely “changed from that place-holder time to a specific time.”

Justice Gorsuch questioned this view, adding that the government regulations in place “suggest that a lot of things are required in a notice to appear, except stuff that the government finds inconvenient, like the hearing date.” He said the government appeared to be making a “trust us” argument.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. explored the meaning of “change” in an extended back-and-forth with Ms. Anand.

He asked her whether she would “dispute the proposition that just as a matter of ordinary language, there can be a change from an indeterminate time or place to a determinate time or place?”

Ms. Anand responded that “ordinary speakers of English don’t use ‘change’ to refer to indeterminate time to determinate time.” She gave the example of a bride sending out a wedding announcement.

“We don’t know the date yet,” she said. “When she sends out her cards telling you the date, we call that a save the date, not a change the date.”