From PBS NewsHour.
During a meeting with El Salvador’s president in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said “homegrown criminals” should be sent to the Central American country.
“Homegrown criminals are next. I said homegrowns are next. The homegrowns,” Trump told Nayib Bukele. “You got to build about five more places.”
“Yeah, we’ve got space,” Bukele responded.
After some laughter in the room, Trump responded, “It’s not big enough.”
The visit comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing deportation efforts, including invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants the administration alleges are gang members to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. The effort has been challenged in court and blocked in some instances, due to the lack of due process for those who are detained or deported.
The administration also said it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a citizen of El Salvador who was living legally in Maryland, to that same prison. Also on Monday, Bukele said he won’t be returning Garcia, calling the question “preposterous.”
Earlier this month, Trump told reporters that he would be willing to take up an offer from Bukele to house incarcerated American citizens in El Salvador. “We have some horrible criminals, American-grown and born,” Trump said. “I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody to take them, I’d be very happy with it. But I have to see what the law says.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said that “it’s an idea that [Trump] has simply floated and has discussed very publicly as in the effort of transparency.”
According to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report, two federal agencies – U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection – “are to investigate and verify the citizenship of individuals their agents and officers encounter to ensure DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] appropriately applies U.S. laws related to immigration to foreign nationals—and does not take administrative immigration and removal actions against U.S. citizens.”
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