President Donald Trump said Monday that he is open to deporting US citizens who are considered violent criminals.
“If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem,” the president said in the Oval Office alongside El Salvador President’s Nayib Bukele, adding that Attorney General Pam Bondi is studying the laws “right now.”
El Salvador agreed to house violent US criminals and receive deportees of any nationality, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in February, in an unprecedented — and legally problematic deal — that has alarmed critics and rights groups.
Any effort by the Trump administration to deport incarcerated US nationals to another country would likely face significant legal pushback and legal experts have noted the US is barred from such a move.
“The US is absolutely prohibited from deporting US citizens, whether they are incarcerated or not,” Leti Volpp, a law professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in immigration law and citizenship theory, told CNN in February after Rubio announced the deal with El Salvador.
Trump told reporters Monday that “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. Why do you think there’s special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too.”
Trump said he’s “all for it” because, he claimed, with the current partnership with Bukele the US can do things “for less money and have great security.”
He praised Bukele’s handling of a large number of prisoners, saying he does “a great job with it.”
Trump added that the US is also negotiating with “others.”
“And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in,” the president added.
This post has been updated with comments from a legal expert. CNN’s Stefano Pozzebon, Jessie Yeung, Marlon Sorto and Lex Harvey contributed reporting to this post.
