New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned a convicted felon just as the Supreme Court was poised to rule on how long the government can hold criminal noncitizens, a move that killed the case and left a contested appeals court ruling intact.
The Supreme Court declared Genalo v. Black moot after Hochul, a Democrat, issued a late-August pardon to Keisy Guerrero Mariano, a lawfully present Dominican citizen who had pleaded guilty to second-degree assault. Solicitor General John Sauer agreed Friday that the case could no longer proceed, Fox News Digital reported, but said the Trump administration would seek an "alternative vehicle" to bring the underlying legal question back before the justices during the 2026, 27 term.
The timing drew immediate criticism. Hochul issued the pardon just as the government's brief was due, effectively pulling the rug from under a case the high court had already agreed to hear. Fox News Digital reached out to Hochul's office for comment but received no response.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan put the move in blunt terms on X:
"Pretty wild to fully pardon an aggravated felon to (1) stop the felon from getting deported and (2) stop the Supreme Court from ruling on an issue. (Especially as this litigation has been going on for years)"
Wessan followed up with a broader question about the precedent Hochul had set:
"I wonder how many non-American felons Governors like Hochul will choose to fully pardon and free to avoid them facing consequences for their actions"
Mariano's case had wound through the federal courts for years before reaching the Supreme Court. ICE first arrested him in 2020 over a 2015 second-degree assault conviction. He spent nearly two years in immigration detention before a federal judge released him in 2022 under a nationwide COVID-19 injunction that required the government to free detainees because of health risks in custody.
In November 2021, while Mariano was still detained, Judge John P. Cronan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied his request for habeas corpus, the legal mechanism a detained person uses to challenge the lawfulness of being held. The Second Circuit overruled Cronan in May 2024, finding that the government must grant noncitizens a bond hearing once detention becomes "unreasonably long." Failing to do so, the appeals court held, violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process.
The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that noncitizens, including those with green card status, do not have a legal right to a bond hearing during prolonged detention if they have committed crimes that are grounds for mandatory deportation. The justices agreed to take the case on June 15.
But the case had a second plaintiff, too: Carol Williams Black, a Jamaican national convicted in New York in 2000 of sexually abusing a minor under the age of 11. Black left the country and filed a court declaration stating he would not return. The Supreme Court ruled his portion of the case moot on that basis. With Hochul's pardon eliminating Mariano's legal jeopardy as well, the entire case collapsed.
The stakes of Genalo v. Black extended well beyond one pardon. The case sat at the center of a disagreement among federal appeals courts over whether the Constitution places any time limit on holding criminal noncitizens while the government processes their deportation. National Review reported that the Second and Third Circuits have both imposed due process limits on detention, while the Eighth Circuit has taken the opposite position, holding that "due process imposes no time limit on detention pending deportation."
That split means the rules change depending on where an illegal immigrant or criminal noncitizen is detained. In New York, the government must justify continued detention at a bond hearing once a judge decides the time in custody has grown too long. In states covered by the Eighth Circuit, including Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, no such hearing is required at all.
Resolving that inconsistency was the whole point of Supreme Court review. Hochul's pardon did not settle the legal question. It simply delayed the answer, and left the Second Circuit's more permissive standard in place across its jurisdiction in the meantime.
Hochul has been a vocal opponent of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts. The governor is described in reporting as "staunchly opposed to President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement crackdown." Her decision to pardon Mariano fits a pattern of blue-state executives using the powers of their office to obstruct federal deportation proceedings, not by challenging the law in court, but by removing the factual basis for a case altogether.
The pardon did not erase Mariano's conviction from history. It did, however, strip the federal government of the legal hook it needed to keep the Supreme Court case alive. Sauer acknowledged as much when he agreed the case was moot, but made clear the administration is not dropping the fight. He said the government intends to find another case through which the justices can resolve the bond-hearing question during the 2026, 27 term.
That means at least another full year before the Supreme Court can weigh in, assuming the administration finds a suitable case and the court agrees to hear it. And it means another year in which the Second Circuit's ruling stands, requiring the government to justify continued detention of criminal noncitizens at bond hearings it believes the law does not require.
Wessan's criticism pointed to the core problem: Hochul used her clemency power not to correct an injustice but to achieve a procedural result. The pardon benefited Mariano, who now faces no deportation risk from his assault conviction. And it benefited the legal position Hochul favors, by preventing the Supreme Court from potentially overturning the Second Circuit's ruling.
The people who did not benefit are the ones who rarely get a voice in these fights: the communities where convicted criminals remain after a governor decides federal enforcement is politically inconvenient. Mariano pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, a violent felony under New York law. His co-plaintiff, Black, was convicted of sexually abusing a child under 11. The legal question the Supreme Court was poised to answer, whether the government can hold people like them while processing their removal, matters most to the people who live next door.
Hochul's office has not explained why the governor chose to pardon Mariano, or why the pardon arrived at the precise moment it would inflict maximum damage on the Supreme Court proceedings. The silence is its own kind of answer.
When a governor will pardon a convicted felon to stop the nation's highest court from ruling on immigration law, the question is no longer whether blue-state leaders oppose enforcement, it is how far they will go to prevent it.
