Trump-appointed justice joins Sotomayor in unlikely alliance to rip DOJ's handling of illegal immigrant case

Two justices from opposite ends of the Supreme Court's ideological spectrum have teamed up to criticize how the Justice Department handled a case against a man in the country illegally. Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, joined a statement by Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, even though the Court as a whole turned down the case on Tuesday, according to Fox News.

The petitioner, Jesus Herrera-Salazar, is a Mexican national who was convicted once of being found unlawfully in the United States. After he completed that sentence, a federal court restricted him to the Eastern District of Oklahoma, yet prosecutors charged him a second time on the same basis. He asked the justices to review the matter, arguing that the second case amounted to double jeopardy barred by the Fifth Amendment.

Sotomayor wrote that the government left him trapped: in its view, he committed a crime whether he stayed in that Oklahoma district or departed the country. She and Gorsuch labeled the situation a "constitutional absurdity." The pairing is notable given their differing judicial philosophies, though the two have previously agreed on protections against government overreach.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →