Opinion of the Court
vant class of aliens. On any other reading of paragraph (1), the command that paragraph (1) gives the Secretary would be downright incoherent.
Our reading is confirmed by Congress’s use of the definite article in “when the alien is released.” Because “[w]ords are to be given the meaning that proper grammar and usage would assign them,” A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 140 (2012), the “rules of grammar govern” statutory interpretation “unless they contradict legislative intent or purpose,” ibid. (citing Costello v. INS, 376 U. S. 120, 122–126 (1964)). Here grammar and usage establish that “the” is “a function word… indicat[ing] that a following noun or noun equivalent is definite or has been previously specified by context.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 1294 (11th ed. 2005). See also Work v. United States ex rel. McAlester-Edwards Co., 262 U. S. 200, 208 (1923) (Congress’s “use of the definite article [in a reference to “the appraisement”] means an appraisement specifically provided for”). For “the alien”–in the clause “when the alien is released”–to have been previously specified, its scope must have been settled by the time the “when… released” clause appears at the tail end of paragraph (1).
For these reasons, we hold that the scope of “the alien” is fixed by the predicate offenses identified in subparagraphs (A)–(D).[1] And since only those subparagraphs settle who is “described in paragraph (1),” anyone who fits their description falls under paragraph (2)’s detention mandate–even if (as with respondents) the Secretary did not arrest them immediately “when” they were “released.”
- ↑ For this reason, it is irrelevant that (as the dissent notes, see post, at 8) paragraph (2) applies to aliens described in “paragraph (1)” and not “subparagraphs (A)–(D).” These two phrases denote the same category, so nothing can be gleaned from Congress’s choice of one over the other.
