{"id":232027,"date":"2025-02-05T02:58:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T02:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/05\/trump-says-he-would-jail-americans-in-el-salvador-in-a-heartbeat\/"},"modified":"2025-02-05T02:58:14","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T02:58:14","slug":"trump-says-he-would-jail-americans-in-el-salvador-in-a-heartbeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/05\/trump-says-he-would-jail-americans-in-el-salvador-in-a-heartbeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Says He Would Jail Americans in El Salvador \u2018in a Heartbeat\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/04\/multimedia\/04dc-trump-bukele-bvmz\/04dc-trump-bukele-bvmz-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Trump Says He Would Jail Americans in El Salvador \u2018in a Heartbeat\u2019\" title=\"Trump Says He Would Jail Americans in El Salvador \u2018in a Heartbeat\u2019\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Trump said on Tuesday that he was open to an offer by El Salvador\u2019s president to jail convicted criminals, including American citizens, in the Central American nation\u2019s notorious \u201cmegaprison.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,\u201d Mr. Trump said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He almost surely does not have the legal right to do it, legal experts say, and any attempt to carry out President Nayib Bukele\u2019s plan would probably be challenged in court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Mr. Bukele\u2019s proposal to essentially turn El Salvador into a penal colony for the United States showed how far he is willing to go to define himself as Mr. Trump\u2019s <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/09\/25\/world\/americas\/trump-salvador-migration.html\" title=\"\">primary ally<\/a> in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/01\/world\/americas\/rubio-central-america-visit.html\" title=\"\">a region<\/a> that the American president has disparaged. And for Mr. Trump, even musing over the proposal signaled his willingness to embrace extreme measures to show he is tough on crime and illegal immigration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s quite extraordinary and unprecedented and alarming in many ways,\u201d said Michael E. Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue research institute in Washington. \u201cI know a lot of experts have raised questions about the constitutionality and legality of this deal, but Bukele is a leader who has absolute power in El Salvador and it seems Trump seems to be moving in a similar direction in trying to reduce or eliminate any checks on his power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Bukele, who has reshaped his country by cracking down on both gangs and civil liberties, said he would be open to imprisoning the deportees in the Terrorism Confinement Center, a prison built to house 40,000 people that has sparked concern from human rights groups over extreme overcrowding and reports of torture by guards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Despite questions over its legality, the proposal prompted praise from Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump\u2019s secretary of state, as well as Elon Musk, the billionaire and powerful Trump adviser who has set about remaking the government. It would also involve jailing for a fee undocumented migrants from any country, not just El Salvador, who had been convicted of crimes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere\u2019s obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution,\u201d Mr. Rubio told reporters in Costa Rica on Monday. \u201cBut it\u2019s a very generous offer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But experts said that those \u201clegalities\u201d virtually precluded the basic premise of the deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt is illegal to send U.S. prisoners to another country,\u201d said Andrea Flores, vice president of immigration policy at the advocacy group <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"http:\/\/fwd.us\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">FWD.us<\/a> and a former National Security Council official. \u201cIt would likely be in violation of the Constitution and the protection against cruel and unusual treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While legal and immigration experts said the proposal to jail Americans was most likely just an effort by Mr. Bukele to placate Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump and his aides view El Salvador as a key partner for immigration enforcement. El Salvador signed what is known as <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/09\/20\/us\/politics\/us-asylum-el-salvador.html\" title=\"\">a \u201csafe third country\u201d agreement in 2019<\/a> to receive non-Salvadorans detained in the United States. That deal was never implemented because of the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Trump\u2019s immigration advisers, however, are interested in expanding such agreements throughout the region now that he is back in office, according to a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Bukele stands out in Latin America as a leader who will jump at the opportunity to reinforce his ties with Mr. Trump, even if it means collaborating on his aggressive immigration policies. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bukele has sought to forge an image of an iconoclast willing to crack down on crime while upending traditional government institutions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While El Salvador once had one of the world\u2019s highest murder rates, killings have plummeted as Mr. Bukele has used a state-of-emergency declaration and the military to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/05\/05\/world\/americas\/el-salvador-nayib-bukele.html\" title=\"\">arrest tens of thousands of people around the country<\/a>, mostly without due process.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When Mr. Bukele offered the United States what he called \u201cthe opportunity to outsource part of its prison system\u201d to El Salvador, he included images showing scores of shirtless tattooed prisoners bending over with their hands on their heads as armed guards in ballistic gear stood watch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When he expressed support for Mr. Bukele\u2019s proposal on Tuesday, Mr. Trump ranted about \u201chardened criminals\u201d in the United States, a frequent complaint as he has sought to cultivate a law-and-order image. The numbers, however, have not neatly lined up with the image he seeks to project. Homicides rose during his first term before <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/12\/30\/us\/murders-decline-crime-concerns.html\" title=\"\">falling under his successor<\/a>, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThis is an administration where there\u2019s a lot of show and a lot of fear, and nobody in Latin America is better at that than Nayib Bukele,\u201d Mr. Shifter said. \u201cI would expect to see a lot more show between Bukele and Trump and his administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Michael Crowley<!-- --> contributed reporting from Costa Rica, and <!-- -->Hamed Aleaziz<!-- --> from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/04\/us\/politics\/trump-el-salvador-americans-jail.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump said on Tuesday that he was open to an offer by El Salvador\u2019s president to jail convicted criminals, including American citizens, in the Central American nation\u2019s notorious \u201cmegaprison.\u201d \u201cIf we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,\u201d Mr. Trump said. He almost surely does not have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/04\/multimedia\/04dc-trump-bukele-bvmz\/04dc-trump-bukele-bvmz-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3392,173343,5500,163575,28795,57889,90287,164426,9197,173344,163599,58749,52,128437,163486],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232029,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232027\/revisions\/232029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}