Well, if you thought it couldn't get any worse in the U.S., unfortunately you were very wrong.
Donald Trump has now officially come out and said
he's interested in punishing U.S. citizens by sending them to prisons overseas. He even directly asked the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, if he would consider building "five more" of their brutal CECOT-style torture prisons to house deported U.S. citizens.
This is not just 'bluster.' We have to take this seriously - now. Sign the petition to condemn this plan and to protect U.S. citizens from foreign imprisonment!Legal experts all agree that this is absolutely illegal and unconstitutional. Well, everyone except Trump's attorney general, Pam Bondi. Instead, Bondi is pointedly dodging questions about whether or not this scheme could possibly be legal. Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that
"the president is looking into" how he could legally move forward with this plan.
Meanwhile, Trump has said
"I'd do it in a heartbeat," referring to rounding up U.S. citizens and sending them to languish, trapped, overseas. At another point, he said
"I love that" idea. While he says on the surface that supposedly he'd only capture "criminals," it's not clear that this would be true. Already, the vast majority of immigrants whom he's accused of crimes in order to detain or deport them without due process have been shown to have no criminal record at all. Meanwhile, he's shown a focus on
targeting those who express political dissent.All of this is arising in the wake of the deportation of
Kilmar Abrego García, a legally protected resident and Maryland father, whom the Trump administration admits it accidentally sent to the CECOT mega-prison due to an "administrative error." Abrego García had fled the gangs in El Salvador, and now he is directly imprisoned with them. Both Trump and the El Salvadorian president have said they have no intention of releasing him from his wrongful imprisonment, or bringing him back to the U.S. -
despite a Supreme Court order to "facilitate" his return.
On a hot mic while showing President Bukele around the Oval Office, Trump said: "
The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You've got to build about five more places."
This also comes in the wake of his
escalating project to target college students, professors, and researchers who have no criminal records - again,
often in defiance of court orders. Even average, everyday tourists from the UK, Canada, and Germany have been swept up in his deportation frenzy.
If Trump can successfully get away with directly violating a Supreme Court order regarding a resident with protected status, there is very little to stop him from continuing to violate the law, the Constitution, and more court rulings.That is - unless we speak up now. This is our moment. We do not have any time to lose.
Sign the petition to demand that the Trump administration abandon any plans to ship off U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in foreign countries!