With a deadline looming for the Trump administration to return a Maryland resident to the U.S. after expelling him along with hundreds of other people to an El Salvador detention center under a shadowy deal with the Central American country, U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday stunned observers by expressing a desire to send U.S. citizens into El Salvador's prison system.
In a press briefing aboard Air Force One Sunday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter about an offer made by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept prisoners sent by the U.S. from its federal prison population.
"I love that," Trump said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."
"I don't know what the law says on that," he added. "I have suggested that, why should we stop at people who cross the border illegally?"
Podcaster and former Obama administration staffer Jon Favreau said Trump's remarks could be summed up as: "He wants to send American citizens to a foreign gulag."
Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which permits the U.S. government to detain and deport noncitizens during wartime, to expel 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they are being held in the country's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). About two dozen people who were originally from El Salvador were also sent to the prison, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland man who had legal protected status, was not convicted of a crime, and had previously received a court order barring the U.S. from deporting him to his home country for fear of persecution and torture.
Trump said several times in his comments Sunday that he was unsure of the legality of sending U.S. federal prison inmates to a foreign prison system.
In February, after Bukele first offered to imprison U.S. citizens, Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told NPR that the idea was a "non-starter."
"You may not deport a U.S. citizen, period," Gelernt, deputy director of the group's Immigrants' Rights Project, told the outlet. "The courts have not allowed that, and they would not allow it... It would be blatantly unconstitutional to deport a U.S. citizen."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also touted Bukele's offer at the time, calling it "an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country."
Trump's remarks on potentially expanding his deal with the Salvadoran president to include U.S. citizens followed U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis's order mandating the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. with a deadline of 11:59 pm Monday.
Xinis on Sunday rejected the administration's request to lift the order, saying Abrego Garcia's expulsion had been "wholly lawless" and that the "risk of harm shocks the conscience."
On Monday, the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Xinis' order, saying her demand that the White House adhere to the Constitution was "district-court diplomacy" and accusing the judge of trying to "seize control over foreign relations."
The administration has attacked the district court in Washington, D.C. in recent days over the order, with homeland security adviser Stephen Miller calling on Congress last week to "step up" and abolish the panel by refusing to fund it.
The White House has called Abrego Garcia's expulsion and imprisonment in El Salvador an "administrative error" and claimed the Maryland father is no longer under U.S. jurisdiction, so the administration cannot order him to be returned.
"We suggest the judge contact President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week.
Washington Monthly contributor David Atkins said that under the same logic, "there is also nothing that prevents them from shipping American citizens to a gulag in El Salvador and saying, 'Nothing we can do.'"
As Trump expressed interest in expelling U.S. citizens to a foreign prison system, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out that the details of the White House's deal with Bukele have not been publicly disclosed.
"We literally know nothing about it, other than we're paying them $6 million," said Reichlin-Melnick. "No law in the United States authorizes us to pay another country to imprison people. And yet! They're doing it."
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, toldNewsweek Monday that the deal with Bukele is being used "as a tool of propaganda with the core objective to dehumanize and villainize people while carrying out their cruel mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked."
"Bottom line, Trump and Bukele's partnership deepens collaboration with authoritarian leaders," said Ghandehari, "further jeopardizing democratic values in the U.S. and around the world."
