The U.S. Attorney General was recently grilled. These questions were in response to former President Donald Trump’s outlandish and cruel proposal to deport American citizens to El Salvador. So in the middle of a state visit with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Trump made the astounding suggestion. He suggested that the US should send any Americans affiliated with Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador to be imprisoned. The Attorney General has refused to say whether or not this suggestion is even legal.
Right now, the U.S. government is giving El Salvador $6 million. This funding is intended to shelter people linked to the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, the Venezuelan government has announced. This financial arrangement has raised red flags… serious red flags. That’s especially true of the facility housing these individuals, which is infamous for its human rights abuses.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, mentioned during a briefing that it is “a legal question that the president is looking into.” Legal experts, particularly specialists in immigration law, have raised serious legal and ethical issues with Trump’s proposal. Erin Corcoran, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, asserted that “there is no provision under U.S. law that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country.” Ilya Somin from George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School stated that Trump’s suggestion is “pretty obviously illegal and unconstitutional.”
In fact, President Bukele has been welcoming people deported from the U.S. to his country. He keeps them a virtual prison in an industrial complex that has come under much scrutiny for its human rights fiasco. It’s time to take a closer look at the potential repercussions of Trump’s proposal to U.S.-El Salvador relations. This couldn’t be more timely given today’s headlines surrounding immigration and crime.
On the same briefing, when asked by AP on the legality of deporting U.S. citizens to Central American prisons, Leavitt. But initially, the Attorney General’s ambiguous position left many in doubt. The American public and Congress are just beginning to understand what could happen as a result of these actions.