Notable conservatives are criticizing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett for supporting the liberal side of the court against President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport known members of the MS-13 gang, which the State Department has classified as a terrorist organization.
In a 5-4 decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court temporarily ruled that a lower DC federal court’s decision to block the president from using the 1798 law to deport the gang members, most of whom are in the country illegally, was not the proper venue. A majority of justices ruled that the gang members were being held in a facility in Texas and, therefore, their cases should have been heard there.
Barrett sided with the Court’s three liberal justices in dissent, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing that the administration’s actions “pose an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.” The majority overturned a lower court’s ruling that had temporarily blocked U.S. deportation flights sending illegal immigrants to mega-prisons in El Salvador and other countries of origin. However, the decision to resume those flights now comes with new restrictions.
Barrett, who was Trump’s third nominee to the high court, briefly rose to prominence as a conservative icon after holding up a blank notebook during her Senate confirmation hearing to demonstrate she had brought no prepared notes or talking points.
Now, she’s facing backlash after conservative commentators online singled her out for trying to limit President Trump’s authority to carry out the deportations under the law’s wartime statutes.
Rogan O’Handley, known as DC_Draino, wrote regarding the justice: “While this Supreme Court victory for Trump allowing him to deport cartels is huge, it was only a 5-4 decision. Guess who joined the 3 liberal Justices to keep cartels here in America? Amy Coney Barrett.”
Catturd, another MAGA influencer who boasts 3.6 million followers on the platform, agreed with O’Hanley.
“There’s nobody I have less respect for in the entire country besides Dr. Fauci than Amy Commie Barrett – Trump appointed her and gave her her dream job and complimented her and praised her – and she’s been an ungrateful, backstabbing POS since day one. She got a million dollar Liberal book deal within weeks and her whole goal in Life is to be praised by The New York Times,” he wrote on the X platform, per Newsweek. He added: “Weak, coward, sellout, fraud. She’s everything that’s wrong with this country. She’s an Absolute disgusting fraud.”
MAGA poster Kim ‘Katie’ USA, a Vietnam-born conservative, wrote on the platform in response to Barrett siding with the court’s liberals: “Appointing a woman, namely Amy Coney Barrett, was a huge mistake.” One of her followers replied: “The bigger issue is that Barrett hates Trump.”
Conservative commentator Jeff Younger noted further: “All the men on the Court voted the law. All the women, including Amy Coney Barrett, voted their feelings.”
Another conservative commentator, Angela Belcamino, added on the platform, per Newsweek: “We can all agree that no one likes Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett… Am I correct?”
One of her followers replied: “She seems to be a wolf in sheep’s wool kinda gal doesn’t she? I’m not sure if she is being led by a dislike of Trump or really was able to get herself branded as a constitutionalist when she really wasn’t.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the dissenting opinion, was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. Coney Barrett joined the dissent only in part.
In the portion of the dissent that Coney Barrett joined, Sotomayor sharply criticized the Supreme Court majority for taking up the case on an emergency basis and overruling U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., who had issued the order halting the deportations.
“If the District Court were to resolve the question in plaintiffs’ favor, the Government could have appealed to this Court in the ordinary course, and we could have decided it after thorough briefing and oral argument,” Sotomayor wrote. “In its rush to decide the issue now, the Court halts the lower court’s work and forces us to decide the matter after mere days of deliberation and without adequate time to weigh the parties’ arguments or the full record of the District Court’s proceedings.”