The ink was barely dry on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision lifting the stay on deportations under the Alien Enemies Act when the legacy media began breathlessly quoting Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent—in apocalyptic tones.
Her warning? That under the Court’s logic, an American citizen could be deported—stripped of rights, booted from the country, exiled without due process, never to return.
Cue the headlines. Cue the hashtags. Cue the hair-on-fire social media engagement from people who haven’t read the statute, the ruling, or a single line of immigration law in their lives.
One not-so-insignificant problem here is that her argument is legally incoherent, constitutionally unserious, and factually implausible. More than a few logical fallacies are also greasing this rabbit hole’s tunnel into Abaddon.
But that’s par for the course these days—especially when the audience isn’t fellow jurists but cable news anchors and social media bots.
Let’s be clear: the Alien Enemies Act applies to aliens, not citizens. The text refers explicitly to “subjects of a foreign nation.” It has never—not once in over 225 years of existence—been applied to a U.S. citizen. This isn’t a gray area. It’s not ambiguous.
It’s a fundamental category error that wouldn’t pass a first-year law school exam.
Even worse, it wasn’t just made—it was practically shouted from the rooftop of the Supreme Court Building, seemingly to inflame and distort rather than interpret and clarify.
And it did precisely that. And that’s the real danger here: not that Americans might suddenly be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, but that the public is being misled about what the law says.
Sotomayor’s dissent also trots out the banner of “due process.” But here again, the analysis collapses. Due process means precisely that—you receive the process you are due. Under the AEA, that process is—and always has been—limited.
Hellbound and Down 