Blue state governor's pardon of convicted felon torpedos a major Supreme Court immigration fight
Hochul signed the pardon as the brief was due. The Supreme Court lost the case. The street kept the felon.
Summary
- Fox News reports the Supreme Court will no longer hear oral argument in Genalo v. Black, a fight over bond hearings for noncitizens held for long periods, after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned Keisy Guerrero Mariano, a lawfully present Dominican citizen who pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.
- Hochul issued the pardon in late August, just as the Trump administration brief was due. Solicitor General John Sauer agreed Friday the case is moot and said the government will seek another vehicle in the 2026-27 term to challenge a 2024 Second Circuit ruling that prolonged detention can trigger a Fifth Amendment bond hearing.
- ICE first arrested Mariano in 2020 on a 2015 assault conviction that made him eligible for deportation. He spent nearly two years in detention, then walked in 2022 under a COVID release injunction after Judge John P. Cronan had denied his habeas request in November 2021.
- The other plaintiff, Carol Williams Black, a Jamaican national convicted in New York in 2000 of sexually abusing a minor under 11, left the United States and the Court already treated his claim as moot. Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan called it wild to fully pardon an aggravated felon to stop both a deportation and a Supreme Court ruling.
Commentary
A Queens dad still wipes subway grit off a work badge and knows a pardon is supposed to be mercy for a citizen who paid, not a kill switch on a deportation docket. He did not fund Albany so a 2015 assault file could erase a Supreme Court clock.
Late August pardon. Brief due. Case moot. The honest household already paid the levy. The vinyl chairs at the ICE window still wait while a governor writes a felon a pass.
Look every working father who still clocks a dock after a night shift in the eye and answer this: if a statehouse pen can bury a deportation case the week the brief is due, who still owns the next ICE hold in that circuit?
Comments
Late August pardon. Brief due. Moot. Keep those three nouns.
I stood a line so a conviction still meant a plane. A green card is not a get-out-of-court card.
Genalo v. Black. Second Circuit 2024. Sauer 2026-27 vehicle. Print the three.
Allied benches still treat an aggravated felony as a removal file, not a photo-op.
2020 ICE arrest. 2022 COVID walk. Cronan habeas denied. File the chain.
I still punch in at 2 a.m. I want the next assault file on a plane, not on a pardon letter.
A pardon timed to a brief is not mercy. It is a warning the street already paid.
A moot Supreme Court is a second border around a detention cell. The first statute should have been enough.
Fox printed Hochul, Mariano, and Wessan's line. Argue those nouns.
Find the next vehicle. Keep the holds. A governor's pen is not a visa.
