President Donald Trump on Monday suggested his administration could send US citizens who commit violence to El Salvador. He told Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele at the White House that the “homegrowns are next” and urging him to build more prisons to house them.
The United States hopes to start deporting criminals that hold US passports to El Salvador, Trump said. As the President welcomed 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.
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Trump to deport US citizens
Trump floated the idea, which he had discussed previously, to Bukele in the Oval Office before reporters entered the room for a bilateral meeting. The exchange was captured in a livestream video published on the X account of Bukele’s office.
“Homegrown criminals are next,” Trump said to Bukele. “I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve go to build about five more places.” “Yeah, we’ve got space,” Bukele responded as Trump officials in the room could be heard laughing.
“It’s not big enough,” Trump said.
Trump has turned to El Salvador to imprison alleged criminals non-U.S. citizens deported from the US. Bukele opened up CECOT, the country’s notoriously brutal Terrorism Confinement Center, for use by the Trump administration to hold more than 270 men it accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs.
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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.
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What Trump said on deportations
When the President was asked about deportations, which were briefly blocked by a US court last month, Trump said, “I’d like to go a step further.”
“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, hit elderly ladies on the back of the head when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters.
“I’d like to include them in people to get out of the country.” When pressed on the matter by a reporter, he replied: “They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too. I’m all for it.”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was present at the meeting, is “studying the laws right now”, the US president added.
“If we can do that, that’s good,” he said. “I’m talking about violent people, really bad people.
“We can do things with the president [of El Salvador] for less money and have great security. He does a great job with that. We have other we’re negotiating with too.”
What experts said
Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was interested in deporting “heinous, violent criminals” who are U.S. citizens to El Salvador “if there’s a legal pathway to do that.”
“I can’t see how exiling someone is permissible as part of the bundle of rights that are fundamental to citizenship — doubly so if the effort to house American citizens overseas means turning a person over to a foreign authority,” Anthony Kreis, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, told NBC News.
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David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Trump’s remarks show how “absolutely critical it is for the courts to put an immediate stop to this extrajudicial imprisonment by foreign proxy.”
“U.S. citizens may not be deported to imprisonment abroad. There is no authority for that in any U.S. law,” he added.
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