Trump Administration Reveals Intent To Deport US Citizens To El Salvador

By blueapples – Zerohedge

The wanton abandonment of constitutionality and the subsequent assault on the civil liberties of Americans that disregard entails is an embodiment of the festering corruption plaguing Washington. While President Donald J. Trump has promised to be the panacea that would rid the United States of that disease for the better part of a decade since first being elected as president in 2016, many of the actions of his second presidential administration convey that he has become infected himself instead of proving to be any such cure. Following a stunning admission by the president that his administration is considering deporting US citizens to be imprisoned in El Salvador, the prognosis that Trump’s return to the White House will usher in a return to the rule of law looks to have been met by its death knell.

In recent vintage, examples of the Trump administration’s attack on civil liberties have been made more palatable to its supporters by virtue of being directed at 2 particular individuals who are not US citizens; anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil and alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Ábrego García. Khalil, a Green Card and student visa holder, has been engaged in deportation proceedings since being detained by ICE for organizing protests against the State Of Israel on the campus of Columbia University. Garcia has been deported to a Salvadorian prison despite the Trump administration acknowledging his removal from the country was the product of an administrative error that overlooked the “withholding of removal status” he was granted by an immigration judge in 2019.

Although Louisiana immigration judge Jamee E. Comans ruled that Khalil is eligible to be deported, he awaits a hearing in New Jersey on a habeas corpus petition that was filed shortly after his arrest which has placed an injunction of his deportation proceedings. Only one day before Comans’ ruling on Khalil’s deportation eligibility, the United States Supreme Court deemed Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador to be illegal, rejecting the Trump administration’s claim that a judgment rendered by Judge Of The United States District Court for the District of Maryland Paula Xinis to return Garcia from El Salvador was invalid due to negotiations of his return falling into the category of foreign relations, thus making them fall outside of the court’s scope. In the decision, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote ‘The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” Her remarks would soon prove to be ominous foreshadowing.

Despite the Supreme Court decision upholding Xinis’ order to return Garcia from El Salvador, the Trump administration made its recalcitrance clear when President Of El Savador Nayib Bukele confirmed he would not cooperate with the US to return Garcia during his visit to the Oval Office. Bukele justified his decision by rationalizing that doing so would be tantamount to smuggling a terrorist into the US, siding with the Trump administration in its rejection of the Supreme Court decision. However, that apparent breach of the separation of powers enshrined in the US Constitution was somehow not the most stunning revelation that took place during the meeting.

While speaking to reporters alongside Bukele, Trump stated his desire to deport US citizens guilty of violent crimes to the same types of Salvadorian prisons that Kilmar García was sent to. Bukele replied indicating that El Salvador was not presently equipped to handle such an initiative, claiming the country would need to build 5 new facilities to cooperate with the US in that endeavor. Trump expounded on his point by replying to the immediate concerns raised by reporters regarding his statement by saying that he had tasked Attorney General Pam Bondi with a review of the legality of the goal, a process that will inevitably interrupt the regularly scheduled programming on Fox News that constantly features Bondi by making her actually have to get to work for once. While Trump tempered the zeal of his stunning admission by qualifying it with the condition that only the most violent criminals in the US would face deportation to El Salvador, his ominous statement utterly proved the axiom that an attack on civil liberties is an attack on all Americans.

The unprecedented nature of Trump’s aim to deport US citizens is so brazenly unconstitutional on its face that the basis by which it is illegal has not even been contemplated. Considerations on jurisdiction, due process, and the Eighth Amendment of the Bill Of Rights that protects against cruel and unusual punishment are just a few of the legal arguments that would neuter the Trump administration’s self-admitted aims to do so. Trump’s premise that US citizens can be deported if found guilty of certain crimes is so absurd that it even would violate legislation he signed into law in 2018. Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December of 2018 after supporting the bill at the behest of his son-in-law and former special advisor Jared Kushner. The First Step Act requires the federal government to house federal inmates as close to their homes as possible to allow their families to visit them, even requiring the transfer of prisoners more than 500 miles away from their homes to a facility closer to family. The blatant contradiction presented by deporting US citizens to El Salvador with the Trump-backed First Step Act highlights the administration’s lack of consideration that went into suggesting the idea.

News of the Trump administration’s plan to explore deporting American citizens comes at a time where many of the president’s longtime supporters have started to raise doubts over whether or not his rhetoric on mass deportations of illegal immigrants will ever come to fruition. In February 2025, 11,000 deportations were done compared to the 12,000 that took place in February 2024. At the present average of daily deportations, it will take nearly 100 years for the 20 million-plus illegal immigrants who have entered into the US to be deported, a timeframe that highlights the lack of progress made on this fundamental component of Trump’s domestic policy.

The disappointment left by those numbers was also exacerbated following Trump’s announcement of his administration’s forthcoming self-deportation initiative. The program will provide illegal immigrants with a stipend and plane ticket to leave the country but will also give those it deems to be in good standing with the administration the eligibility to reapply for US citizenship, effectively paying millions of illegal immigrants to apply for US citizenship. Describing the self deportation program, Trump stated that “We’re going to make it comfortable for people and we’re going to work with those people to come back into our country legally — the good ones.” That statement that comes in stark juxtaposition to the promises Trump made on the campaign trail to execute a mass deportation plan once he returned to office. Trump also described how his administration would be working with farmers, hotels, and other businesses to keep illegal immigrants working for them in the country for the time being as part of the self-deportation initiative, citing the need of those respective economic sectors for workers who are in the country illegally.

The about-face from the hard lined rhetoric made about purging the country of illegal immigrants that Trump campaigned on in favor of exploring initiatives to deport American citizens adds insult to injury for supporters of his who have become disenfranchised with the administration’s approach on immigration. That sentiment was raised by critics of the deportation efforts led against activists like Mahmoud Khalil, lamenting how deportation was being used as a tool to infringe upon free speech exercised against the State Of Israel when those resources could be used to further the mission to rid the country of illegal immigrants. This episode of another apparent prioritization of Israel’s interest over the US’ undermines the legitimacy of Trump’s “America First” message that led to the support which brought him back to the White House.

Following the launch of an Antisemitism Task Force that aims to revoke the student visas of critics of Israel who could be deported thereafter, discouraged supporters of Trump’s sardonically quipped that it would only be a matter of time before American citizens would be deported for criticizing Israel as well. While those remarks were made in jest, the tremendous latitude offered by the Immigration And Nationality Act to remove non-resident aliens from the country who the Secretary Of State deems to be problematic to US foreign policy creates a legal framework that could serve as the basis to exile American citizens on that same basis. When discussing the deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, the State Department cited the INA and stated that the US’ foreign policy objective to fight antisemitism across the globe was the deterministic factor leading Secretary Marco Rubio’s crusade to have Khalil and other anti-Israel protesters deported from the country.

The political lens that US citizens who favorably viewed the deportations of Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar García through has proven to lend nothing but a myopic perspective that has blinded its viewers to the peril their support puts the civil liberties of American citizens in. The embrace of the abandonment of the Constitution — which the Supreme Court has deemed applies to non-citizens since 1886 in the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins — to achieve ulterior political motives has led to the realization of the gravest fear that critics of the handling of the cases of Khalil and Garcia have expressed; that the erosion of civil liberties supported in pursuit of deporting those 2 will ultimately lead to further assault on the rights of US citizens. While Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar have been vilified to the point where they have been painted as enemies of the American people, the cruel irony of that outcome is that all it has achieved is proving that the greatest enemy of the people is the state itself. That lesson is something the country’s Founding Fathers did everything they could to embed into the American ethos but in forsaking to uphold the sanctity of the Constitution, the American people have proven they have forsaken that lesson as well.