American Civil Liberties Union

Today the Supreme Court rejected the government's effort to deprive immigrants seeking review of a removal order of a fair day in court. In Nken v. Holder, the Court considered the proper legal standard governing an immigrant's application for a stay pending court review of an administrative removal order: Should the immigrant have to show “clear and convincing evidence that the entry or execution of [the removal] order is prohibited as a matter of law”? Or does the immigrant have to meet the lower traditional standard for preliminary relief, which is based on a balancing of factors in the case, including whether the petitioner is likely to win at the end of the day and whether he will suffer irreparable harm without the temporary relief?

To put it in plain English: After an immigrant gets ordered deported by an administrative immigration court, he petitions a federal court if he thinks the immigration court got it wrong. At the beginning of such cases, the immigrant always asks the federal court to issue an order freezing the removal order, to make sure that the government doesn't send him away before the court can decide the case. Nken is about how hard it is to get that temporary order freezing the status quo.