Kafkaesque justice

摘要

TOWARDS THE end of Franz Kafka's "The Trial", Josef K, the protagonist, gets some advice. There is no such thing as a definite acquittal, the court artist tells him; the court "forgets nothing". Whenever they like, the authorities can renew their charges against the released defendant. When they do, Kafka writes, "his life as a free man is at an end." American law emulated Kafka on March 19th when a 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled that many immigrants who had been held in criminal custody are subject to mandatory detention by Immigration and Control Enforcement (ICE) at any time after their release. Eduardo Vega Padilla, one of the litigants in Nielsen v Preap, came to America in the 1960s as an infant. In the late 1990s he was twice convicted for possessing drugs and, in 2002, for illegally (as a previous felon) owning a firearm. In 2013, 11 years after finishing his six-month sentence for the gun conviction, Mr Padilla found himself on the brink of being deported to Mexico, a country he left when he was 16 months old.