While the Supreme Court has defined certain constitutional protections for incarcerated individuals, the Court has never clearly defined the due process rights of immigrant detainees in the United States. Instead, the Supreme Court defers to the due process protections set by Congress when enacting U.S. immigration law. Increasingly, the federal courts defer to Congress and the Executive’s plenary power over immigration law and enforcement. This has resulted in little intervention in immigration matters by the federal courts, causing the difference between immigration detention and criminal incarceration to diminish in both organization and appearance. Immigration detention, however, is a form of civil detention and is legally distinct from criminal incarceration. This distinction is important because the federal courts traditionally approach civil detention with a scrutinizing eye. Civil detainees receive certain Fifth Amendment protections not available to the criminally convicted, namely that their detention cannot amount to punishment. The consequences of lacking a clear definition of immigrant detainees’ due process rights became far more apparent during the COVID‑19 pandemic. As COVID‑19 infections spread and detention and confinement conditions became more perilous, immigrant detainees relied on habeas corpus petitions to challenge the conditions of their confinement and seek release. However, several federal courts concluded that habeas was an inappropriate vehicle through which to challenge conditions of immigration detention, reflecting a long-standing circuit split within the criminal incarceration context. This Comment argues that courts that denied habeas petitions for release of immigrant detainees during the COVID‑19 pandemic incorrectly analogized immigration detention to post-conviction criminal incarceration. This Comment suggests that the COVID‑19 pandemic highlights the need for the federal courts to take a more principled approach to analyzing the substantive due process rights of immigrant detainees by drawing analogies to a different stage of the criminal adjudication process: pretrial detention.

虽然最高法院已经为被监禁的个人定义了某些宪法保护，但法院从未明确定义过美国移民被拘留者的正当程序权利。相反，最高法院在颁布美国移民法时遵从国会规定的正当程序保护。联邦法院越来越多地服从国会和行政部门对移民法和执法的全权。这导致联邦法院对移民事务的干预很少，导致移民拘留和刑事监禁之间的区别在组织和外表上都缩小了。然而，移民拘留是民事拘留的一种形式，在法律上与刑事监禁不同。这种区别很重要，因为联邦法院传统上以审查的眼光处理民事拘留。民事被拘留者获得了某些被刑事定罪的人无法获得的第五修正案保护，即他们的拘留不能构成惩罚。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，对移民被拘留者的正当程序权利缺乏明确定义的后果变得更加明显。随着 COVID-19 感染的蔓延以及拘留和监禁条件变得更加危险，移民被拘留者依靠人身保护令申请来挑战他们的监禁条件并寻求释放。然而，一些联邦法院得出结论认为，人身保护令是质疑移民拘留条件的不适当工具，反映了刑事监禁环境中长期存在的电路分裂。该评论认为，在 COVID-19 大流行期间拒绝释放移民被拘留者的人身保护申请的法院错误地将移民拘留与定罪后的刑事监禁进行了类比。该评论表明，COVID-19 大流行凸显了联邦法院需要采取更原则性的方法来分析移民被拘留者的实质性正当程序权利，通过类比刑事审判过程的不同阶段：审前拘留。