President Donald Trump is looking to extend his program of rendition to include U.S. citizens.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said he was encouraging Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into ways to send Americans to prisons in El Salvador under an agreement he struck with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele.
"I'd like to go a step further. I said to Pam, I don't know what the laws are, we always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways," he said. "I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country."
The Trump administration deported Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's CECOT earlier this year, alleging that they were members of the gang Tren de Aragua. Trump claimed the authority to deport the migrants without due process under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Since that point, the Trump admin has flagrantly defied judges' orders to halt deportations and return wrongfully deported people.
On Monday, Trump asked Bukele to build more prisons to house Americans accused of crimes.
"Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places,” he said. "It’s not big enough."
When reporters asked Trump if he was really considering shipping citizens to a foreign prison, Trump failed to take the off-ramp.
"What do you think, there’s a special category of person?" he said.
“If they’re criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over their head that happen to be 90 years old and if — if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them," he said. "They’re as bad as anybody that comes in."
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