The Constitution grants Congress plenary authority over immigration policy, but liberal judges have increasingly usurped the law. On Monday the Supreme Court will consider if immigrants whom Congress has deemed deportable can seek sanctuary in the courts.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) establishes rules and procedures by which immigrants may be removed from the country. To prevent federal courts from getting clogged, Congress created special immigration courts with multiple levels of administrative appeal and limited federal judicial review of cases.

In Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan man caught after crossing the Mexican border illegally is challenging the INA’s expedited removal. The law lets the government use streamlined procedures to deport anyone unlawfully present in the country for less than two years.

The man applied for asylum, but two asylum officers and an immigration judge determined that he failed the “credible fear” test for staying in the U.S. A district judge rejected his legal challenge because the INA lets immigrants appeal only specific factual findings in federal court, none of which the plaintiff contested. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the INA’s expedited procedures violate the Constitution’s Suspension Clause protecting the writ of habeas corpus.

This is the principle that prisoners have a right to challenge the legal process by which they are detained. The Supreme Court has only once found a violation of the Suspension Clause—in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), which involved enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay. But habeas corpus protects against unlawful executive detention, and the traditional remedy is release. The plaintiff here is not saying he was detained unlawfully, and the government wants to release him back to Sri Lanka. He isn’t seeking a habeas writ. He wants more procedural rights to stay in the U.S.