Donald Trump has long fantasized instituting draconian punishments for all manner of crimes. The president has previously floated sending undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, instituting the death penalty for drug dealers, and bringing back firing squads as a method of execution. On Friday, Trump mused about sending American citizens who vandalized Teslas — the car produced by his plutocratic co-president Elon Musk — to a prison accused of human rights violations in El Salvador.
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
As backlash intensifies to Musk and Trump’s mass firings of federal workers, razing of government agencies, and destabilization of the economy, Tesla has become a target of protests — some of which devolved into violence. On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest of three individuals who had vandalized Tesla vehicles, dealerships, or charging stations.
“All three defendants will face the full force of the law for using Molotov cocktails to set fire to Tesla cars and charging stations,” Bondi wrote. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”
Accusations of terrorism have become a catch all designation in the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on immigration, political dissent, and protests while circumventing established due process rights. Earlier this week, the Trump administration drew the ire of the judiciary and legal advocates when it allegedly ignored a court order blocking the president from invoking the Alien Enemies Act in order to summarily deport two planeloads of migrants to El Salvador and into the custody of their prison system.
The Trump administration claimed, with scant evidence, that the deported migrants were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the president designated a foreign terrorist group earlier this year. Under the attempted invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the deported men were not granted immigration hearings, or given a chance to disprove that they were members of the criminal gang. Instead, they were shipped off to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — Center for Terrorism Confinement — (CECOT), a massive prison in rural El Salvador that was built as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on organized crime.
It’s clear that in this matter, Bukele has served as a template for the Trump administration. The El Salvadoran government has been accused of running mass detentions without due process, abusing and even torturing prisoners, and keeping those detained in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions. Videos and images that have emerged from CECOT echo images of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib that once enraged Americans. Bukele himself has posted video of half-naked prisoners being manhandled, forced to run while being clipped by batons, crowded into cells and arranged like sardines in concrete cell blocks, with their heads bent in submission.
The United States sending deported migrants to CECTO, paying El Salvador $6 million dollars to hold the prisoners, was part of a heavily produced shock-and-awe operation that indulged some of Trump’s most authoritarian fantasies. Prisoners were hauled off planes in shackles, each of them half-dragged between El Salvadoran guards (clad head to toe in body armor and weaponry), who kept the prisoner bent at the waist and staring at the ground. Their heads were shaved and they were corralled into already overcrowded cells for their stay. High-definition cameras captured the show for social media.
The ritual humiliation is the point. It’s why when Trump threatened to send three arrested U.S. citizens to CECOT on Friday, he sarcastically referenced how El Salvador’s prisons had “become so recently famous for such lovely conditions.” It’s why one of his first actions as president was to attempt to revive Guantanamo Bay prison as a migrant detention facility. As past presidents have learned, the shameful stain of human rights abuses under the seal of the president is permanent.
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