Trump Mentions the Idea of Deporting US Citizens to El Salvador
But it's fine because he's only referring to "absolute monsters"
I have an idea.
I think we should use normal due process for charging US citizens with crimes, as described in the Bill of Rights.
Then I suggest keeping the question of illegal immigration separate from how you view or treat real citizens. If someone shows up here illegally, they don’t belong here.
Just deport them. Bringing up all of this stuff about sending them to El Salvador “because it has really efficient prisons” is probably a fine idea (I don’t really care about this at all, since I just want my country to be free of the criminal and financial drain of the invaders); but it is confusing the issue and I believe Trump is using the conversation as a wedge to get people comfortable with deporting, not just illegal immigrants, but American citizens who have politically incorrect opinions.
With El Salvador, liberals are whining because they don’t like El Salvador as a country. That’s because their president is a Christian who is fixing a rampant problem with criminal gangs and making his country safe again.
Murders in El Salvador Keep Plunging, Nearly Vanished in 2024
A lot of people say Trump should have done martial law in 2020 (and I am one of those people).
Whining about this is obviously silly. If liberals wanted to make a real argument, they’d say what I’m saying: that imprisoning illegals overseas might get used to establish a precedent for doing the same thing to normal citizens who commit crimes.
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.
Well.
I’m no legal scholar. But I am a civil rights advocate. I’m a huge fan of civil rights. At least, the ones in the constitution. (And yes, I realize that no federal administration has remotely honored the constitution since prior to the 20th century. But things are getting steadily worse now, and I’m not aware of any president ever saying, “Let’s deport superbad criminals into foreign prisons.”)
I reject the idea of deporting US citizens (real Americans) who have been convicted of even the most heinous crimes. You can’t deport citizens. It’s an insane idea.
Deporting someone into a foreign country for imprisonment is a punishment FAR FAR worse than the death penalty.
That’s like when Joseph’s brothers were getting ready to kill him but then they realized that it would be more lucrative to sell him as a slave to foreigners.
This is ghastly stuff.
Where is that Eighth Amendment thing?
I’m calling the deportation of US citizens cruel and unusual punishment. Can’t have it. I’m against this whole thing.
Trump said he would only go through with the idea if his administration determined it was legal.
Well that’s a relief!
It would be a shame if he started arresting people for illegal reasons, such as having done a journalism (First Amendment) or attended a peaceful protest (First Amendment).
Oh…
Hmm…
Well. I’m sure the arrests of the foreign students for no real reason without proof of crimes has nothing, repeat NOTHING, to do with this new suggestion Trump is making about expanding the deportation powers to include actual US citizens.
You would have to be the most paranoid conspiracy theorist in the world to suggest that Trump might wish to combine “you criticized our government”-style persecutions with “even citizens can be deported”-style persecutions, to create a new super-power: “even citizens can be deported if they criticize our government in a way we perceive as threatening our power to govern well”.
Really?
I never knew that the purpose of the government and its law enforcement apparatus was to protect itself from rogue citizens!
I thought the point was to protect the citizens from a rogue government!
I know. It’s disappointing that Jefferson didn’t actually say that awesome thing about using the constitution to protect people from criminals and the government!
That was Ayn Rand! Ugh!
But for once in her life, she was correct! I like her statement.
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.
(“Muh human rights abuses!” Reuters is gay. Journalism is enough to convince you to strongly consider the justice of Trump’s idea about deporting citizens.)
That’s so weaselly! Of the reporter I mean! Why can’t you confront what Trump is actually doing wrong without dragging in goofy ad hominem stuff about the country he’s in talks with? Why does it matter where he wants to send US citizens? You’re confusing people!
It’s nothing about where he’s sending them. It’s the fact he wants to send them anywhere at all! The government isn’t allowed to go “Joseph’s Brothers” on one of its own citizens.
"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.
Oh you are against the subway pushers? Me too.
And the baseball-bat-style old lady smashers? Me too.
But you just execute those people.
Trump is trying to confuse you. I hope it isn’t working!
We already have a perfectly fine legal system (in theory) for dealing with violent crime. But it isn’t designed to handle unlimited invasion by foreign populations, something we’ve been experiencing relentlessly since the passage of the 1965 Hart Celler immigration act.
Now that most people have no living memory of the pre-1965 America, most are also conditioned into thinking that all of this immigration insanity—with its attendant spikes of crime and strife and stagnant wages—is just inevitable.
It isn’t!
Trump was supposed to deport these people in 2016! He didn’t! That’s that!
Now he is coming back and saying, “We’ll deport them to foreign prisons. And while we’re at it, let’s go after “homegrown criminals.”
SMH.
He’s talking about you dear reader. You!
"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.
Well he just cares about laws, you know?
“The laws are so important folks. Some of these First Amendment folks. When you start to talk about removing their rights, they get very testy. They say, ‘Mr. Trump! They’re trying to suppress my speech! I have to have free speech!’
And they’re right aren’t they? We cannot let the antisemites win on this one. They don’t want you to have free speech, and they’re coming for it. Antisemites HATE free speech and they never seem to rest do they? Someone set fire to Governor Josh Shapiro’s house in Pennsylvania last week. Did you see that? So terrible. A real patriot Josh. But they hate him for his speech. He is being attacked for promoting free speech and everyone right to support our wars.”
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.
The Reuters article is so bad I almost feel ashamed quoting it.
Of course people found to be lying during the naturalization process should be stripped of citizenship. They lied! About things that matter and raise questions about why the hell they’re here!
That is rare, but it shouldn’t be. What should be rare is immigration at all, and what should be common is removing all of the criminal invaders who keep arriving here at the government’s behest in order to become a permanent intergenerational drain on the swiftly-expiring nation.
And the reporter overlooks the real upshot of all of this: it’s a setup for Orwell-style imprisonment/deportation for crime-think.
"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.
Quite a discovery there professor. But it’s encouraging to know!
Why don’t these professors say, “there is no provision under U.S. law that requires our government to provide unlimited, unconditional aid and weapons to Israel”?
Why doesn’t Trump say that?
He used to say that. In 2015.
Is it because of the threats to his family?
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.