The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a case involving the detention of immigrants:

The Supreme Court will decide whether to extend the reach of a 2001 ruling that limited the detention of some immigrants to a "reasonable period," generally six months. The 2001 ruling covered the detention period, while the United States attempts to find a country to take them, for permanent resident immigrants convicted of a crime and ordered deported.

The new case will determine whether the same six-month time limit also extended to immigrants apprehended at the border while attempting to enter illegally and then ordered removed from the United States.

The case involves Daniel Benitez, a Cuban refugee , who came to the U.S. in 1980 and was later jailed for armed robbery, burglary, battery and other crimes. His sentence was up in 2001 but he has remained in immigration custody under a 1996 law.

His lawyer, John Mills of Jacksonville, Fla., said Benitez and the others "face the very real possibility of spending the rest of their lives incarcerated, not because of any crimes they may have committed, but because their countries will not take them back."

....Records show that 2,269 immigrants awaiting deportation are in prison, and more than half have been detained more than six months, including 920 Mariel Cubans. Lower courts have split on what to do with them since the 2001 Supreme Court ruling that immigrant detentions longer than six months would probably be unconstitutional. The government has been told by some courts to release 63 detainees.