Deadline: Legal Blog-White House floats deporting U.S. citizens. Justice Sotomayor just warned about that. [View all]
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned potentially deporting American citizens who are violent repeat offenders if its legal.
White House floats deporting U.S. citizens. Justice Sotomayor just warned about that.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned potentially deporting American citizens who are violent repeat offenders âif itâs legal.â
www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...
— hateGOP (@hategop.bsky.social) 2025-04-08T21:21:49.219Z
White House floats deporting U.S. citizens. Justice Sotomayor just warned about that.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned potentially deporting American citizens who are violent repeat offenders if its legal.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-leavitt-deporting-us-citizens-el-salvador-sotomayor-rcna200299
Responding to a question at Tuesdays daily briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned President Donald Trumps idea to potentially deport violent and heinous U.S. citizens, adding a seemingly important caveat: If its legal.
Its not.
But that doesnt mean it cant happen. Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned just a day earlier of the possibility.
Dissenting from the Supreme Courts decision to grant emergency relief to the government in a case about deportations, Sotomayor wrote that the implications of the Trump administrations legal stance is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal.
The possibility also lurks in another appeal pending before the justices, in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was erroneously deported to El Salvador. Despite conceding an administrative error in sending him to that country, the government has resisted remedying the error. Supporting his return, constitutional scholars wrote to the high court that, if the governments position were correct, then the Executive Branch would possess a shuddering degree of power power that the President could wield in extreme and extraordinary ways, including against American citizens that the President simply disfavors.
Leavitts comments thus reinforce the importance of the courts forthcoming decision in Abrego Garcias case, whose consequences could inform just how far this administration will go.