Hochul Pardon of Illegal Alien Assault Felon Moots Supreme Court ICE Bond Case

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Genalo v. Black, the immigration-detention case that had been set for oral argument on Oct. 13, after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned the remaining respondent and erased the conviction that put him in mandatory ICE custody.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer agreed the habeas case is now moot. He told the Court the Trump administration will look for an “alternative vehicle” to challenge the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s 2024 holding that prolonged immigration detention can trigger a Fifth Amendment right to a bond hearing.

Hochul granted Keisy Guerrero Mariano — identified in the docket as “Keisy G.M.” — a full and unconditional pardon in late August for a 2015 New York second-degree assault conviction, a felony. That conviction was the sole basis for treating him as deportable and holding him under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c), the statute that requires detention without bond for certain criminal aliens. Once the pardon issued, he was no longer removable on that ground.

The Justice Department and Mariano’s counsel filed a joint stipulation to dismiss. The Court took the case off the October calendar the same day.

The petition originally involved two detainees. One claim dropped earlier. When the justices granted review on June 15, they narrowed the case to Mariano, who had been held about 21 months after the assault conviction before a habeas court and the Second Circuit intervened. The Second Circuit, in May 2024, said detention that becomes “unreasonably long” can require a bond hearing even when Congress wrote a mandatory-detention statute.

The administration’s position was that aliens — including lawful permanent residents — who commit crimes listed as deportation grounds do not acquire a constitutional right to a bond hearing merely because the case takes time. Sauer’s Friday letter accepted mootness and reserved the legal fight for another docket.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan called the pardon “pretty wild,” writing on X that it was used “(1) to stop the felon from getting deported and (2) stop the Supreme Court from ruling on an issue,” after years of litigation.

The dismissed case also involved a second track that never reached argument. Carol Williams Black, a Jamaican national with lawful status, was convicted in New York in 2000 of sexually abusing a child under 11. Her claim was no longer before the Court when Hochul acted.

Sauer said the government still intends to present the statutory question during the 2026–27 term if it can find a live respondent. Until then, the Second Circuit rule remains the law in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont: once ICE detention stretches long enough, judges in that circuit may order bond hearings the statute does not provide.

The pardon does not rewrite federal immigration law. It removed one defendant from one docket. The underlying dispute — how long the government may hold a criminal alien without a bond hearing — is unresolved at the Supreme Court.