Court to resolve future of immigrants

? The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide if authorities can indefinitely imprison hundreds of Cuban immigrant criminals and other illegal foreigners with no country to accept them.

About 2,220 such people are in jail now, in limbo because the U.S. government says they’re too dangerous to be freed but they have no homeland.

The Bush administration wants the Supreme Court to say that longtime detentions are acceptable, especially in light of post-9-11 concerns about protecting borders.

But the government narrowly lost the last time the issue came before the court. Justices ruled in 2001 that it would be unconstitutional to indefinitely detain legal immigrants who have already served time for crimes. In this follow-up case, justices will decide if people in America illegally have the same rights.

The test case involves a now-45-year-old man who fled Cuba with thousands of other people in 1980. Daniel Benitez was sent to prison in Florida for armed robbery, burglary, battery and other crimes.

He finished his sentence in 2001, but has been in U.S. immigration custody since then.