The tone of the Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele quickly shifted from diplomatic to unsettling. What began as a routine exchange between two heads of state on Monday soon turned into a stark illustration of Trump’s increasingly authoritarian approach to governance, particularly in his second term. Bukele, known internationally for his strongman tactics, offered a controversial gesture: his government’s assistance with the United States’ crime and terrorism issues. “We know you have a crime problem and a terrorism problem we can help with,” Bukele said during his opening remarks.

Within just 40 minutes, this vague offer led to a chilling development. Trump and his aides began to explore potentially illegal proposals, including defying a Supreme Court order and sending American citizens to foreign prisons.

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Ignoring a Supreme Court Order

The conversation quickly turned to the case of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration in March. Once there, he was imprisoned in CECOT—El Salvador’s high-security “Terrorism Confinement Center,” notorious for alleged human rights violations. U.S. officials have since admitted his removal was an error.

On April 4, a U.S. district court ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” García’s release from custody and return him to the United States. This was followed by a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on April 10, reinforcing the district court’s order and emphasizing that the administration had violated a prior withholding order prohibiting his removal.

When asked whether the administration would comply, Trump turned to Attorney General Pam Bondi for a response. Her reply was defiant. “First and foremost, he was illegally in our country,” she said, referencing a 2019 ruling by an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals that claimed García was a member of MS-13, the gang Trump has designated a terrorist group.

Bondi added, “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” essentially rejecting the U.S. court’s authority. When Bukele was asked if he would send García back, his response was blunt: “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

A Shocking Proposal: Exporting U.S. Citizens to Foreign Prisons

The press conference took an even darker turn when Trump was asked whether he would support the idea of sending U.S. citizens convicted of violent crimes to prisons in El Salvador. Instead of rejecting the notion as unconstitutional or unethical, Trump openly embraced it. “You think there’s a special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in,” Trump said, implying that American-born individuals should not be treated differently from foreign nationals. “We have bad ones too. I’m all for it.”

Trump said that Bondi was “studying the laws” to determine whether the U.S. could legally implement such a policy. “If we can do that, that’s good,” he added. “I’m talking about violent people.”

Legal and Ethical Alarms

Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have condemned the conditions at El Salvador’s CECOT prison, citing evidence of torture, incommunicado detention, denial of due process, and lack of basic healthcare and nutrition. Sending U.S. citizens to such facilities could violate the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Moreover, the First Step Act, signed into law by Trump himself in 2018, includes a provision restricting incarceration of individuals more than 500 miles from their home—a clear conflict with the proposal to imprison U.S. citizens abroad.

The Troubling Case of Kilmar Abrego García

Abrego García, the man at the center of this controversy, had been living in Maryland with his wife and three children, all U.S. citizens. In 2019, he was accused of being affiliated with MS-13. While an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals initially upheld the government’s claim, those decisions were later reversed. A new judge found credible evidence that Abrego García and his family had been targeted and harassed by gangs in El Salvador.

Despite this, Abrego García was arrested in March and mistakenly placed on a deportation flight. In her April 4 ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis questioned the validity of the government’s gang-related evidence, noting that it relied on nothing more than a Chicago Bulls hoodie and a vague, uncorroborated statement from a confidential informant.

A Pattern of Mislabeling and Mistreatment?

The implications of García’s case go beyond a single individual. According to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 75% of the migrants deported to CECOT under the Trump administration have no criminal record. This statistic raises serious concerns that the U.S. government is deporting and incarcerating individuals—some of them American citizens or legal residents—based on weak or fabricated evidence. This alarming trend suggests a systemic issue within the immigration enforcement framework, where the rights of individuals are overlooked in favor of a more aggressive deportation strategy. The potential for wrongful deportations and the impact on families left behind cannot be understated, as many of these individuals have deep roots in their communities and face dire consequences upon their return to countries with high levels of violence and instability.

Since Trump returned to office in January, his administration has deported more than 200 individuals to El Salvador, where they have been detained in CECOT. Critics argue this reflects an abuse of executive power and a disregard for due process, civil liberties, and international human rights standards.

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