Miguel Mayet Palma v. R. J. Verdeyen, William French Smith

BUTZNER, Circuit Judge:

The United States appeals a district court’s grant of a writ of habeas corpus to Miguel Mayet Palma, an alien, presently detained in the Petersburg Federal Correctional Institute. The district court recognized that Mayet Palma could be detained pending administrative exclusion proceedings and for a reasonable time thereafter while the government attempted to return him to Cuba. But relying primarily on Rodriguez-Fernandez v. Wilkinson, 654 F.2d 1382 (10th Cir. 1981), it held that neither the Immigration and Nationality Act nor the Constitution empowered the government…