Court challenges UNLIMITED detention of foreigners awaiting deportation
The Seoul High Court has questioned the legitimacy of an Immigration Control Law section that allows foreigners sentenced to deportation to be kept in custody for an unlimited time. / Korea Times file
By Ko Dong-hwan, Park Si-soo
A court has questioned an immigration control law that allows unlimited detention of foreigners awaiting deportation.
The Seoul High Court recently filed a petition with the Constitutional Court asking the top court to examine the constitutionality of Article 63, Clause 1 of the Immigration Control Law. It lays the ground for immigration authorities to detain foreigners awaiting deportation, but it doesn’t stipulate a time limit.
“Putting foreigners in protective facilities under the law unfairly deprives them of physical freedom, which is equivalent to arrest or imprisonment,” the court said. “When the mandate in question has to be enforced, there must be a legitimate mechanism justifying the action.”
The high court filed the petition citing the case of a Chinese man who has been detained since October 2015.
The man, whose name was withheld, was convicted of voice phishing and sending money he stole to China. He was released on a deportation order in October 2015. He was immediately sent to a detention center according to the law. He appealed his conviction, which delayed his deportation, and he has been locked up since.
The high court argued that those subjected to the law suffer extreme mental stress because they are kept in the facilities without a set time for discharge. The court said the law only exists “to easily carry out the judiciary administration of enforcing” the mandate and is thus an “excessive restriction on physical freedom.”
In 2016, the Constitutional Court examined a similar petition challenging the article and decided to maintain it in a 5-4 ruling.