Kristi Noem's response after migrant lawsuit dismissed: 'Suck it'

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem offered a stunning two-word response to news that a group of migrants who were deported to El Salvador had dropped their lawsuit against her.  

"Suck it," Noem wrote on X Thursday, using the government’s official secretary of homeland security social media account. 

The lawsuit Noem was responding to was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 10 migrants who were detained in Texas and later deported to El Salvador, reports say. Lawyers voluntarily dismissed the case because the 10 people had already been deported. 

Response to Noem’s ‘Suck it’ comment

What they're saying:

The reaction to Noem saying "Suck it" on a government social media account was swift. Comments on X ranged from, "I can’t believe how far our country has fallen," to, "What an embarrassment."

Still, there were some commenters who supported Noem’s handling of the situation. 

"If I had known I could vote for this, I would have voted even harder," one comment reads. 

Big picture view:

Her controversial comment comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The administration has railed against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.

Noem on habeas corpus

The backstory:

The post on social media came two days after Noem testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and incorrectly defined habeas corpus as "a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights."

Habeas corpus is a constitutional provision that allows people to legally challenge their detention by the government. The Latin term means, literally, "you have the body."

John Blume, a professor at Cornell Law School, said Noem’s response to Hassan was either evidence that she "fundamentally misunderstands habeas corpus" or "was giving an answer she knew was wrong to appease the president."

Habeas corpus was included in the Constitution as an import from English common law. Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which was meant to ensure that the king released prisoners when the law did not justify confining them.

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The Constitution’s Suspension Clause, the second clause of Section 9 of Article I, states that habeas corpus "shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it."

Will the Trump administration suspend habeas corpus? 

Dig deeper:

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said earlier this month that President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand his administration's legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, Miller said the administration is "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus.

The United States has suspended habeas corpus under four distinct circumstances during its history. Those usually involved authorization from Congress, something that would be nearly impossible today — even at Trump’s urging — given the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

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President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus multiple times during the Civil War, beginning in 1861 to detain suspected spies and Confederate sympathizers. He ignored a ruling from Roger Taney, the Supreme Court 's chief justice. Congress then authorized suspending it in 1863, which allowed Lincoln to do so again.

Congress acted similarly under President Ulysses S. Grant, suspending habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, it was meant to counter violence and intimidation by groups that opposed Reconstruction in the South.

Habeas corpus was suspended in two provinces of the Philippines in 1905, when it was a U.S. territory and authorities were worried about the threat of an insurrection, and in Hawaii after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor but before it became a state in 1959.

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