There has been speculation for the past few years that British royal Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, lied about his prior history of using illicit drugs on an application to obtain a visa to reside legally in the U.S., an offense that could alter his immigration status to illegal and render him deportable.

President Donald Trump recently suggested he had no desire to deport Harry, however, given that he already has "enough problems" with his "terrible" wife, Meghan Markle, Newsweek reported.

Trump's remark is just the latest entry into an ongoing and years-long back-and-forth in which the president and the American duchess -- who many have accused of controversially driving a wedge between Harry and the rest of his Royal Family -- have traded snarky barbs and sharp critiques of each other.

Trump doesn't want to deport Prince Harry

The New York Post reported over the weekend that President Trump was asked on Friday about the potential issues with Prince Harry's immigration status and whether he would deport the British royal back to the United Kingdom.

"I don’t want to do that," Trump replied. "I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible."

The president went on to express kinder sentiments toward Prince William, Harry's elder brother and the heir to the British throne, whom he met with privately in December when both were in Paris, France, for the grand reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral following that famed structure's devastating and near-ruinous fire several years ago.

"I think William is a great young man," Trump said.

Lawsuit centered on Harry's immigration status reopened

According to the Independent, Prince Harry's questionable immigration status was suddenly back in the news after a federal judge in Washington D.C. reopened litigation on the issue brought by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that had previously been seemingly settled last year.

The problem here is Harry's admission in his 2023 memoir "Spare" of illicit drug use in years past, including the use of cocaine, marijuana, and other psychedelic drugs, and whether the prince was honest about that drug use when he filled out his visa application, which could have rendered him inadmissible, per U.S. immigration laws.

Heritage filed a Freedom of Information Act request with then-President Joe Biden's Department of Homeland Security for Harry's visa application and subsequently filed a FOIA lawsuit when DHS rejected that initial request. The organization claimed that information was of "immense public interest" as to whether Harry had lied about his drug use or if Biden had granted the British royal special treatment and privilege above the law.

In September last year, Judge Carl Nichols ruled against Heritage and determined that Harry's immigration status would remain private, but now five months later, and for reasons that remain unclear, Nichols ordered the case reopened last week.

Trump previously said he will not "protect" Harry or grant him "special privileges"

The Independent noted that President Trump was asked about the issue last year and, though he didn't state outright that he would deport Prince Harry if elected, he also suggested that he wouldn't stop a deportation from occurring if that is what the law dictated.

"I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me," Trump told the U.K.'s Express last February.

Just a month later in March of last year, Trump told Nigel Farage of GB News in an interview, when asked if any "special privileges" would be extended to Harry, "No. We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action."