POLITICS NEWS – Trump threatens to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad

Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer

Trump has openly stated that his administration is actively exploring a proposal to detain U.S. citizens and send them to prisons in El Salvador. Before he met with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, Trump stated, “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.” It appeared that Trump was saying that he would need to build around five more prisons to house U.S. citizens. El Salvador is already used as a holding ground for hundreds of people in maximum security prisons. Many of these people were flown from the U.S. in recent weeks after being detained for presumably lacking legal status or having alleged gang affiliations. Critics of this policy have said that many people who have already been deported were deported with little or no due process. 

In response to Trump’s comments, President Bukele suggested that he would be in favor of incarcerating U.S. citizens, saying, “Yeah, we’ve got space.” This proposal has been condemned by several legal scholars, who said this would represent unprecedented encroachments on the civil liberties of U.S. citizens.