New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pardoned a convicted felon just as a major Supreme Court immigration case reached its deadline, a move that killed the case entirely and drew sharp criticism from state officials who called it an abuse of executive clemency.
The Supreme Court will no longer hear oral argument in Genalo v. Black, a case the Trump administration had fought to bring before the justices to challenge a federal appeals court ruling that granted detained noncitizens the right to bond hearings. Solicitor General John Sauer agreed Friday that the case is now moot, Fox News Digital reported, after Hochul issued a pardon to one of the two plaintiffs, Keisy Guerrero Mariano, a lawfully present Dominican citizen who had pleaded guilty to second-degree assault.
The timing was not subtle. Hochul issued the pardon in late August, just as the administration's brief was due. The other plaintiff, Carol Williams Black, a Jamaican national convicted in New York in 2000 of sexually abusing a minor under the age of 11, had already left the United States and filed a court declaration stating he would not return. With both plaintiffs effectively out of the picture, the case collapsed.
The result: a years-long legal fight that had reached the highest court in the country was snuffed out by a single governor's pen stroke, shielding a Second Circuit ruling that the Trump administration had been preparing to challenge on constitutional grounds.
Mariano's case stretches back a decade. He was convicted of second-degree assault in 2015 and served time for the offense. ICE first arrested him in 2020 based on that conviction, and he spent nearly two years in immigration detention. In November 2021, U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan of the Southern District of New York denied Mariano's habeas corpus petition, a legal request to challenge his continued detention.
Mariano was released in 2022, not because a court found his detention unlawful, but because of a nationwide injunction that required the release of ICE detainees over COVID-19 health risks.
In May 2024, the Second Circuit overruled Judge Cronan's decision. The appeals court held that the government must grant noncitizens a bond hearing once their detention becomes "unreasonably long," and that failing to do so violates the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. The Trump administration appealed, arguing that noncitizens, including green card holders, do not have a legal right to a bond hearing during prolonged detention if they have committed crimes that qualify as grounds for mandatory deportation.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on June 15. It was shaping up to be one of the most consequential immigration rulings of the term, a direct test of whether the federal government can hold criminal noncitizens in immigration detention without periodic judicial review. The pardon of a convicted felon by a Democratic governor ended that prospect before a single oral argument was heard.
Eric Wessan, Iowa's Solicitor General, did not hold back. He took to X to criticize Hochul's decision:
"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 also raised a broader question about where this kind of maneuvering leads. He posted a follow-up asking how many noncitizen felons governors like Hochul would "choose to fully pardon and free to avoid them facing consequences for their actions."
The criticism cuts to a real problem. If a governor can pardon a plaintiff to moot a federal case the state's political allies want to preserve, the pardon power becomes a tool of procedural sabotage, not mercy. The Supreme Court had already invested months in the case. The administration had prepared its arguments. And a single executive action, timed to the brief deadline, wiped all of it away.
Hochul, who is described as staunchly opposed to President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement efforts, has not responded. Fox News Digital reached out to her office for comment, but no response was noted. The governor has offered no public explanation for why she chose to pardon a convicted felon at the precise moment it would kill the administration's Supreme Court appeal.
Solicitor General Sauer may have conceded that Genalo v. Black is moot, but he made clear the administration is not walking away from the underlying legal question. Sauer stated the administration will seek an "alternative vehicle" to bring the Second Circuit's 2024 ruling before the Supreme Court, with the goal of getting the issue resolved during the Court's 2026, 27 term.
That means the legal battle over bond hearings for detained noncitizens is delayed, not dead. But the delay is itself a victory for those who want the Second Circuit's ruling, which expanded procedural protections for noncitizens in immigration detention, to remain in effect as long as possible. Every month the ruling stands unchallenged at the Supreme Court level is another month it governs how ICE handles detention in the Second Circuit's jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court's recent rulings have repeatedly drawn national attention, and the loss of Genalo v. Black from the docket removes what would have been one of the most closely watched immigration cases in years.
Both plaintiffs in the case exited in ways that served the same result. Black, the Jamaican national convicted of sexually abusing a child, left the country and filed a declaration that he would not return, mooting his portion of the case. Mariano, the Dominican citizen convicted of assault, received a pardon from a governor politically aligned against the administration's immigration enforcement agenda.
Neither plaintiff's exit was the product of the legal process running its course. One left the country. The other was pardoned at the eleventh hour. The case did not fail on the merits. It was emptied of parties.
For the Trump administration, the setback is procedural but significant. Finding a new case that presents the same legal question, with plaintiffs who cannot be pardoned or removed from the litigation, will take time. The administration must identify a suitable case, litigate it through the lower courts, and petition the Supreme Court again, a process Sauer has projected will not reach the justices until the 2026, 27 term at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Democratic efforts to reshape the Court's influence continue on multiple fronts, from legislative proposals to procedural maneuvers like the one Hochul executed here.
Mariano is identified in court documents as "Keisy GM." He pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, a violent felony under New York law. He served time for the conviction. ICE detained him for nearly two years based on that criminal record. A federal judge denied his habeas petition. And yet Hochul chose to wipe his record clean at the precise moment it would inflict maximum damage on a federal case she opposed.
The pardon does not merely free Mariano from the legal consequences of his conviction. It removes the criminal predicate that made him subject to mandatory deportation proceedings in the first place. In one stroke, Hochul eliminated both the man's criminal record and the federal government's standing to use his case as a vehicle for Supreme Court review.
Other high-profile Supreme Court decisions have frustrated the administration before, but those losses came after full briefing and argument. This one never got that far.
DHS General Counsel James Percival has warned of what he called an "epidemic of judicial activism," arguing that individuals wanted for serious crimes must remain in immigration detention during removal proceedings. Whether or not one frames Hochul's pardon as judicial activism, it was an executive action, not a court ruling, the effect was the same: it overrode the normal course of federal litigation and shielded a lower court ruling from Supreme Court scrutiny.
Hochul's office has not explained the pardon. No public statement from the governor has addressed why a convicted felon received executive clemency at the exact moment it would destroy a pending Supreme Court case. Fox News Digital's request for comment went unanswered.
The open questions are straightforward. Did Hochul coordinate with Mariano's legal team or advocacy groups? Was the timing deliberate or coincidental? And if the governor is willing to pardon one convicted felon to block federal immigration enforcement, how many more pardons might follow the same pattern?
Wessan, the Iowa Solicitor General, posed that last question publicly. No one from Hochul's office has answered it.
Cases like emergency Supreme Court appeals remind Americans that the Court's docket carries real consequences for real people. When a governor can erase a case from that docket with a pardon timed to a filing deadline, the system is not working the way it was designed to work.
Clemency exists for mercy. Using it as a procedural weapon to shield a political outcome is something else entirely, and the people who will live with the consequences are not the ones holding the pen.