President Trump came under fire Monday for his weekend tweets suggesting that unlawful entrants be “immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases,” be expelled from the country. “A long and complicated legal process, is not the way to go – will always be disfunctional,” the president asserted. Commentators quickly pounced, enjoying the opportunity to tut-tut that even unlawful entrants were entitled to due process under the Constitution.

These commentators are partially correct, but their strident “actually, Mr. President” tweets and columns betrayed their own ignorance more than the president’s. The Supreme Court has long held that aliens within the United States are entitled to due process, “whether their presence is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.” But that is only the beginning of the question of what process a particular class of alien is entitled to.