President Donald Trump has said he “loves” the idea of sending American “wiseguys” to El Salvador prisons.
The remark came when a reporter questioned Trump about if he would be considering sending Americans to El Salvador after President Nayib Bukele said he’d be willing to take them. Trump previously said he would be “fine” and “very happy” with the removal of incarcerated Americans to El Salvador’s jails, while DOGE leader Elon Musk called it a “great idea.”
“I love that,” Trump said Sunday. “If we could take some of our 20-time wiseguys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and then purposely run people over in cars — if he would take them, I would be honored to give them.”
The Trump administration has already deported hundreds of immigrants who were allegedly members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to a mega-prison in El Salvador last month after the president invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act.
A federal judge had temporarily halted their deportation, but by the time he issued his order, the planes were already in the air.
The administration later admitted that “many” of the dozens of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison have no criminal record. Several of those deported also appear to have been targeted solely for having tattoos.
Trump added that he “doesn’t know” what the law says on deporting Americans to El Salvador but that he can’t “imagine the law would say anything different.”
“If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I’m all for it,” he said.
Experts say there isn’t any legal basis for sending Americans to foreign prisons.
“I know of nothing that would give the president the authority to force U.S. citizens serving federal prison sentences to serve their time in a different country’s prisons,” law professor M. Isabel Medina with Loyola University New Orleans College of Law previously told The Independent.
“Because the constitutional authority to create federal crimes lies with Congress, not the Executive, and because U.S. citizens may not be deported, even if imprisoned, it would appear to be illegal for the president to do this particularly without any statutory authority,” Medina added.
“A reminder: the Trump administration has revealed NO DETAILS of the pact with El Salvador,” immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X in response to Trump’s Sunday comments. “We literally know nothing about it, other than we’re paying them $6 million.”
“No law in the United States authorizes us to pay another country to imprison people,” he added. “And yet! They’re doing it.”
After musing about whether he can send Americans to El Salvador, Trump then went on a rant about “American-grown” criminals.
“We have some horrible criminals, American-grown and born,” Trump said. “We have somebody that bops an old woman over the head, and we have somebody that is in jail 20 times and goes back and shoots people all over the place and then has a bad judge or bad prosecutor that do nothing about them, all they worry about is politics, they don’t worry about that.”
“I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody to take them, I’d be very happy with that, but I’d have to see what the law says,” he continued.
