CNN
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The Trump administration is preparing to send more immigrants with criminal records to El Salvador’s notorious mega prison on the heels of a Supreme Court order allowing the use for now of a sweeping wartime authority for deportations, according to two US officials.
El Salvador has emerged as a key US ally in Latin America as President Donald Trump pushes to advance his aggressive immigration agenda. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is expected to visit the White House on Monday to discuss the use of the country’s Cecot prison, the largest in the Americas. And the Trump administration has even fielded a recent proposal from private security contractor Erik Prince to establish a US-run migrant detention facility in El Salvador, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday the US would continue using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people.
“It’s one of the reasons I went to El Salvador last week was a visit with the President. Asked him to continue to take terrorists from the United States of America that no longer belong here,” she said.
But the administration’s reliance on El Salvador as it seeks to ramp up deportations has proven to be controversial — prompting fraught legal battles and public pushback. This week, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed removals, but made clear that officials must give migrants subject to the measure adequate notice, so they have “reasonable time” to bring habeas complaints.
Those complaints have already popped up in some parts of the country. Federal judges in New York and Texas on Wednesday issued orders to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.
Amid the legal back and forth, the administration fielded an unprecedented pitch from Prince, a long-time ally of Trump and a notorious private security contractor, to set up a US-run immigrant detention facility in El Salvador to detain immigrants with criminal records, according to the sources familiar with the discussions.
The idea gained traction in some corners of the federal government because some officials believed it would potentially be cheaper to detain immigrants abroad and help shore up detention capacity which is already stretched thin. But other US officials were more skeptical and have sought to knock it down, seeing it as legally tenuous and unrealistic.
The pitch revealed Prince’s influence on the Trump administration’s push for significantly tougher immigration enforcement and reflected the increasing interest in partnering with El Salvador and its Trump-friendly president in that effort. But the Supreme Court decision appears to have put Prince’s proposal for another facility on hold because sending migrants to Cecil remains a possibility.
CNN has reached out to both the White House and Prince for comment.
US officials who entertained the idea internally saw it as a way to avoid logistical challenges that have risen with the use of the Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and skirt issues related to sending migrants to countries other than their place of origin, according to one source familiar with the discussions.
“Guantanamo is a PR statement that they have to figure out how to get out of. Logistically, it was a nightmare,” the source said.
In February, the Trump administration halted efforts to place migrants in tent structures built at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concerns that the emerging facilities didn’t meet detention standards because they lacked air conditioning and electricity.
Trump has expressed support for sending US nationals to El Salvador as well, an unprecedented move that would face significant legal pushback.
“I’d love that,” he said when asked by reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One about a proposal from El Salvador’s president to take in convicted US citizens into the country’s high-security mega prison. “If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I’m all for it, but I’d only do according to the law, but I have suggested that, you know, why should it stop just to people that cross the border illegally?”
Last month, the US removed 238 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua held by the US, along with 22 alleged MS-13 members to El Salvador to be detained in the country’s notorious mega prison.
The Trump administration has admitted to mistakenly deporting a Salvadoran national to El Salvador despite a previous order barring his removal to the country over fear of persecution — and come under fire for other cases that have cast doubt over the administration’s assertions that all those sent to the Central American nation were criminals.
The administration has signaled its desire to significantly ramp up immigration detention. A request for proposals for detention facilities posted by the administration totaled as much as $45 billion over the next two years.
Bukele is key to these efforts, and CNN previously reported that Prince’s direct line to the Salvadoran president has helped a former pariah of Washington establish himself back inside Trump’s orbit.
Prince, who is the brother of Trump’s former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, founded Blackwater, which gained notoriety in 2007 during the Iraq War, when its private contractors opened fire in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, killing 17 Iraqi civilians. Four contractors were convicted and later pardoned by Trump. The company later changed its name and Prince sold the firm in 2010. He currently identifies himself on his website as an investor, entrepreneur and leader in military affair reforms.
Interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials and people close to Prince suggest that he has gained traction within the second Trump administration and is moving quickly to leverage his influence in pursuit of long-held policy beliefs, some of which could turn into big business for him.
Prince previously proposed deputizing private security contractors to swiftly deport undocumented immigrants. The proposal suggested hiring retired ICE and CBP officers, as well as retired state and local law enforcement and properly trained veterans to arrest people.
When asked about that proposal, Trump said he hadn’t seen it but “wouldn’t be opposed.”
