Reading Room Document

Limitations on the Detention Authority of the Immigration and Naturalization Service

The Immigration and Nationality Act by its terms grants the Attorney General a full 90 days to effect an alien's removal after the alien is ordered removed under section 241(a) of the Act, and it imposes no duty on the Attorney General to act as quickly as possible, or with any particular degree of dispatch, within the 90-day period. This reading of the Act raises no constitutional infirmity. It is permissible for the Attorney General to take more than the 90-day removal period to remove an alien even when it would be within the Attorney General's power to effect the removal within 90 days. The Attorney General can take such action, however, only when the delay in removal is related to effectuating the immigration laws and the nation's immigration policies. Among other things, delays in removal that are attributable to investigating whether and to what extent an alien has terrorist connections satisfy this standard. An obligation to act with "reasonable dispatch" will attach at some point after the expiration of the 90-day removal period. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/18926/download.

February 20, 2003