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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that U.S. immigration officials cannot indefinitely hold international citizens they intend to deport when there is no country willing to accept them.

The decision was 5-4.

The ruling stemmed from two cases involving immigrants who had been convicted of crimes. The United States wanted to deport the individuals, but no country would accept them.

The ruling could have implications for thousands of other international citizens in similar circumstances who sit in U.S. prisons.

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One of the cases involved a man who was born in a German displaced-persons camp after World War II. He came to the United States with his family at the age of 8 but never became a citizen.

Kestutis Zadvydas, now 52, was later convicted of several crimes, including robbery.

In 1994 after Zadvydas served a drug sentence in Virginia, the Immigration and Naturalization Service took him into custody and sought to deport him. Germany, however, would not take him, and he was held by the INS for more than five years.

The other immigrant was a Cambodian who was convicted as a teenager of manslaughter in a gang shooting. Cambodia refused to accept the man.