President Trump floated sending American citizens to Salvadoran prisons during a conversation with the Central American country’s leader on Monday — suggesting he build “five more” facilities to make room.
“Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places,” Trump told President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office, prompting laughter from administration officials seated nearby.
“It’s not big enough.”
Trump, 78, has long said he is thinking about ways to send hardened criminals out of the US — in addition to the criminal migrant gang members who have already been removed to the maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
The president said Monday he had directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legal process for deporting US citizens.
“If it’s a home-grown criminal, I have no problem with that,” Trump told reporters.
“We’re studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people, I’m talking about really bad people.”
When asked to confirm he was talking about natural-born US citizens, Trump responded: “If they’re criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over their head that happen to be 90 years old and if — if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them.
“What do you think, there’s a special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed April 8 that Trump was publicly and privately pondering deporting violent repeat offenders to El Salvador.
“The president has said if it’s legal, if there’s a legal pathway to do it — he’s not sure, we are not sure if there is,” she said. “It’s an idea that he’s floated and has discussed very publicly.”
Trump had said the previous day he would “love” and be “honored” to send “20-time wiseguys who push people into subways” to the Latin American mega-prison.
