Trump Says He’s ‘All For’ Sending U.S. Citizens To El Salvador | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump doubled down Monday on his hope to illegally ship U.S. residents to a brutal jail in El Salvador, telling reporters he’s “all for it.”

“You mentioned that you’re open to deporting individuals that aren’t foreign aliens to El Salvador,” a reporter famous throughout a bilateral Oval Office assembly between Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

“Does that include, potentially, U.S. citizens?”

Trump didn’t draw back: “I’m all for it,” he stated.

“If they’re criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old and if, uh, if they rape 87-year-old women in Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them,” he added.

“They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, too.”

Trump beforehand urged that individuals who vandalize Teslas as a protest in opposition to the corporate’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk must also be despatched to El Salvador.

The reporter requested the query after Trump inspired Bukele to construct a number of extra detention services and even supplied to assist pay for them, praising them as “great facilities, very strong facilities.”

Conditions on the megaprison are notoriously brutal. Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, testified final month below penalty of perjury that individuals there are denied communication with their family members and attorneys; that individuals are tried en masse by the lots of; and that some prisoners are held in solitary confinement cells which are fully darkish.

(Watch the second within the video above.)

A livestream of the total assembly on Bukele’s social media accounts appeared to seize the 2 leaders discussing the plan in additional element.

“The homegrowns are next,” Trump will be heard saying roughly seven minutes and 30 seconds into the stream. “You’ve gotta build about five more places.”

“Yeah, we have space,” Bukele responded because the room erupted in laughter.

The 43-year-old chief, who has proudly described himself because the “world’s coolest dictator,” thrust El Salvador into the middle of a human rights disaster upon embarking an his aggressive crackdown in opposition to crime in 2022.

In the three years since his “War Against the Gangs” started, 1000’s of individuals have been detained with out due course of and thrown into El Salvador’s infamously austere Terrorism Confinement Center, often known as CECOT.

Unfounded third-party accusations of gang affiliation, expressing political opposition to the president, having tattoos, and even simply residing in a gang-controlled neighborhoods have all landed individuals in CECOT, the place the federal government has admitted has no course of or intention for prisoner’s launch.

The alarming back-and-forth between Bukele and Trump is the second time the Trump administration has publicly mulled depriving American residents of the rule of legislation in below per week.

Last Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated Trump is exploring authorized pathways that may allow him to “deport” U.S. residents to El Salvador.

She tried to mood the thought barely, describing it as an “if” and never essentially a “when.”

“The president has said, if it’s legal, right, if there is a legal pathway to do that. He’s not sure, [and] we are not sure if there is,” Leavitt informed reporters at a press briefing. “It’s an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed very publicly in the effort of transparency.”