Imagine being a U.S. citizen. Convicted of a crime. Instead of going to prison in Michigan or Texas or whatever flavor of private hellscape our system usually offers, you get a one-way ticket to El Salvador’s CECOT—Bukele’s infamous concrete dystopia where inmates sit shirtless and stacked like cordwood. That’s not a horror movie. That’s an actual idea being floated by President Donald Trump. Again.

Trump, now in his second presidency (God help us), stood next to Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele and declared, “The homegrowns are next.” That’s not a euphemism for domestic agriculture. He’s talking about U.S. citizens, and he wants to deport and imprison them abroad. In El Salvador. For a fee. NPR

Bukele’s response? “Yeah, we’ve got space.” Great.

1. You can’t deport a U.S. citizen. Ever.

As the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt bluntly put it: “You may not deport a U.S. citizen. Period.” NPR

The Supreme Court said as much in Trop v. Dulles (1958), ruling that stripping citizenship is cruel and unusual punishment. Even suggesting forced removal—let alone to a foreign prison—amounts to unconstitutional exile.

2. Americans abroad still have constitutional rights.

Reid v. Covert (1957) smacked down the idea that Americans lose their rights overseas. The Court declared that “no agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress or any other branch…which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.” Case summary

So even if Trump inks a deal with Bukele, he can’t use a treaty to violate due process, legal representation, or jury trial rights.

3. Foreign prisons like CECOT violate the Eighth Amendment.

CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison, is infamous for brutal overcrowding, zero privacy, and lack of sanitation or potable water. Senator Jon Ossoff warned it would be “a moral and legal travesty” to send anyone there—let alone an American.

Sending prisoners into known abusive conditions isn’t “tough on crime.” It’s cruel and unusual punishment, baked into policy.

4. Prisoner transfers require the inmate’s consent.

Under U.S. law—specifically 18 U.S.C. § 4100 and related treaties—you can’t send someone to another country to serve time without their informed, voluntary agreement. Trump’s plan bypasses that entirely.

Even treaties like the one with Mexico or the Council of Europe’s transfer convention require full consent from the prisoner and both governments. You can’t contract your way out of constitutional rights.

5. If you’re outside U.S. jurisdiction, good luck accessing U.S. courts.

Once someone’s in a Salvadoran prison, federal courts can’t easily intervene. That means no appeals, no habeas corpus, no oversight. And that’s exactly the point—Trump’s legal strategy is to act before courts can stop him, as Justice Sotomayor warned: that his administration may try to “deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence.”

That’s not law enforcement. That’s autocracy.

Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and the sound of constitutional norms being shredded.

Trump’s Attorney General, Bondi, said this plan will “dramatically reduce crime.” Fox segment quoted in NPR. Because sure, disappearing people into foreign black sites is a time-honored way to cut the crime rate. Just ask any dictator.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk cheered the idea as a “great idea!” and probably pitched a neural implant for tracking inmates.

GOP leaders? Silence.

The usual tough-on-crime crowd isn’t saying a word. Even conservative legal scholars declined to comment—because they know defending this would blow their originalist cosplay wide open.

Once you normalize exiling citizens into foreign prisons, it’s open season on who qualifies. It starts with “gang members.” Then political opponents. Then journalists. Protesters. You.

Trump has already said he wants to prosecute enemies in DOJ show trials. Now he’s trying to skip the trials altogether.

TL;DR:

This is unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, and unserious—except the guy pushing it controls the DOJ. Again. And while no citizen has yet been shipped off (as of April 16, 2025), it’s clear that Trump’s administration is trying to find a legal loophole to disappear Americans—and outsource the moral burden to foreign governments for a check.

So yeah, welcome back to the Banana Republic of America. Only now, the bananas are prison jumpsuits, and the export is you.

Sources: