After deporting foreign passport holders to notorious Central American prison, president hints US citizens could follow.
The United States hopes to start deporting criminals that hold US passports to El Salvador, President Donald Trump has said.
Trump told reporters as he welcomed El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to the White House on Monday that he would like to send violent “homegrown criminals” to be imprisoned under a deal with the Central American country’s government.
The comments came amid ongoing controversy over the wrongful deportation of a migrant to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
Trump said he would only go through with the idea if his administration decided it was legal.
“We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump declared.
“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you’ll have to be looking at the laws on that.”
Trump told reporters last week that he “loved” the idea, after Bukele said his country was open to housing US prisoners.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later confirmed that the proposal was on the table, saying Trump had “simply floated” the idea.
University of Notre Dame professor Erin Corcoran, an immigration law expert, said there is “no provision” under US law “that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country”.
‘Build more prisons’
The US leader made the remarks as the controversy over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran who was living in Maryland with his family and was granted protection from deportation by a court in 2019 before being shipped to CECOT.
The US Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return. However, the administration has said Garcia’s fate is up to El Salvador and has sought to maintain that he is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, despite a lack of evidence or any convictions.
On Monday, Bukele told Trump that he would neither return Abrego Garcia nor release him in El Salvador. Trump said he was not interested in asking for Abrego Garcia to be released.
“Homegrown criminals are next,” the US president said to Bukele. “I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.”