In yet another disgusting display in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison where he’s currently sending immigrants without due process and against court orders.
During his Monday meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on camera saying that “homegrowns are next” to be sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison where people are housed in inhumane conditions, including without mattresses, pillows, proper nutrition, time outside, and access to family or lawyers.
“The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough,” Trump told Bukele, apparently referring to U.S. citizens who he wants to send to CECOT.
When Trump was later asked if he would send U.S. citizens to CECOT, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
“If they are criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head, if they rape 87-year-old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I’m all for it,” he said.
Sending anyone to a notoriously brutal foreign prison is horrific. But the fact that he’s now thinking of sending U.S. citizens to CECOT should send shivers down the spine of every American.
In the United States, people who are incarcerated are still protected by the Constitution. The 8th Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” and the 14th Amendment says that states cannot “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
According to Human Rights Watch, CECOT’s conditions are abhorrent, with members having witnessed “cases of torture, ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, severe violations of due process and inhumane conditions, such as lack of access to adequate healthcare and food.”
Even the U.S. State Department detailed the human rights violations in El Salvador’s prisons in 2023, saying that they killed multiple detainees either from “medical neglect or physical abuse.”
“Prison conditions before the state of exception were harsh and life threatening due to gross overcrowding; inadequate sanitary conditions; insufficient food and water shortages; a lack of medical services in prison facilities; and physical attacks. The addition of 72,000 detainees under the state of exception exacerbated the problem. Human rights organizations reported that as of August 22, more than 70 detainees died in prisons from violence, insufficient medical care, and chronic health conditions,” the State Department’s report said.
Trump and his MAGA minions have taken perverse pleasure in sending hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to CECOT, even celebrating video of immigrants being shuffled into the prison despite a federal judge ordering Trump to return them to the United States.
And despite the Supreme Court upholding a lower court’s order for Trump to bring back a Maryland man who was sent to the prison by mistake, Trump and Bukele are refusing to comply—sparking a full-on constitutional crisis.
“This is sickening. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was here legally. Trump illegally sent him to a prison in El Salvador, and the administration admitted it was a mistake. The Supreme Court ORDERED his return, but Trump has refused. If they can do this to him, they can do it to anyone,” Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez of California wrote on X.
If Trump is refusing to comply with court orders to return immigrants from El Salvador, who’s to say he won’t send journalists or political adversaries there next?