Photo: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House on Monday he had no plans to return a man mistakenly deported from the United States, suggesting that doing so would be like smuggling a terrorist into the country.
By Gram Slattery and Sarah Morland
WASHINGTON -President Donald Trump said on Monday he wants to deport some violent criminals who are U.S. citizens to Salvadoran prisons, a move that experts said would violate U.S. law.
Trump’s comments marked the clearest signal yet that the U.S. president is serious about deporting naturalized and U.S.-born citizens, a proposal that has alarmed civil rights advocates and is viewed by many legal scholars as unconstitutional.
Trump said he would only go through with the idea if his administration determined it was legal. It was not clear what level of due process an American would receive before being deported to a country Washington has previously accused of serious human rights abuses, including harsh and arbitrary detentions.
“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 told reporters during Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s visit to the White House.
“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 added.
The U.S. government cannot forcibly remove citizens from the country for any reason, though in rare cases foreign-born citizens can be stripped of citizenship and deported if they commit terrorism or treason, or are found to have lied about their background during the naturalization process.
“There is no provision under U.S. law that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country,” said University of Notre Dame professor Erin Corcoran, an immigration law expert.
Trump told reporters last week that he “loved” the idea of deporting citizens to El Salvador, after Bukele said the country was open to housing U.S. prisoners.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later confirmed that the proposal was on the table, saying Trump had “simply floated” the idea.
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of migrants accused of criminal affiliations to El Salvador’s harsh mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, under often-contested legal authorities. The U.S. is paying El Salvador $6 million to detain the migrants.
Trump’s deal with El Salvador
According to the American Conservative website , El Salvador’s offer to open its prison system to American inmates is an unusual one; generally, criminals are not an import of choice. Bukele, however, is an enterprising businessman as well as a capable politician, and he sees his country’s prison system as an asset that can be profitably leveraged.
The deal runs thus: The U.S. deports criminal illegal aliens to be incarcerated in El Salvador’s Terrorism Containment Center megaprison (also known as CECOT)— In return, the U.S. government pays El Salvador $20,000 a year per inmate to house, feed, and most importantly guard them. This is about half the cost that would be expended were the inmates enrolled in the federal system of penitentiaries here in the U.S., a massive savings for the U.S. government. At the same time, with a GDP per capita of less than $6,000, this far exceeds the costs per prisoner expended by El Salvador’s prison system, allowing Bukele to turn a tidy profit on the operation.
The first batch of deportees alone will bring in well over $5 million dollars a year for El Salvador, a sum that Bukele is hoping will increase significantly—and well he might, as El Salvador’s prison system is a serious expense for the country, which is both small and far from wealthy. Currently, the government spends over $200 million annually to maintain CECOT and the rest of El Salvador’s penitentiaries, over 3 percent of the national budget. The addition of American prisoners, and the American dollars that come with them, serve as a way to subsidize the prison system and reduce its significant drain on the country’s resources, freeing up more of the budget for investment and development. The money does also enter the national economy via the salaries of prison guards and administrators and the purchase of food and other supplies for the inmates.
But to Bukele, the benefits of offering his country as an extension to the American prison system go beyond the purely monetary. They also serve as an effective way to curry favor with the Trump administration. Influence in Washington is a powerful currency, particularly in Latin America, and there are few countries that can reliably claim to possess it—none of them as small and economically insignificant as El Salvador. But Bukele, who already has amassed something of a following on the American right with his successful crackdown on crime, provides a unique value proposition: direct assistance with Trump’s own crackdown on illegal immigration and crime.
The potential benefits for Bukele are quite significant. Not only can he turn his prison system from a drain on the national budget into a profitable state enterprise, he may also be able to leverage his influence to increase security cooperation with the U.S., which now has a vested interest in maintaining El Salvador’s stability and political integrity—something he may well need in the future. Latin American countries are notoriously difficult to keep safe and free over the long term . American involvement in the country is likely to bring with it an increase in private investment, taking advantage of the low cost of labor and living in the only recently pacified country. If the bet pays off, it may well lead to a safer and more prosperous El Salvador. Bukele stands to reap the political benefits.
Of course, there are risks involved, as with any contract. Lawsuits against Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act might end the pipeline of American prisoners headed southwards. Alternatively, Trump—always something of an unpredictable actor—might decide that Bukele as a public figure is more of a nuisance than an ally (he has already criticized the president in the past). Or, worst of all, the addition of dangerous and capable criminals from the U.S. might destabilize the country’s much-vaunted prison system, something that would probably signal the end of Bukele’s power in the country.
Bukele, however, has proven to be a highly effective executive, and is obviously confident in the law enforcement and prison system he has built in the country. By all appearances, he is going to achieve the unusual feat of making prison pay.
(Reuters)/ The American Conservative