The Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants who claim that they are members of MS-13 gangs, calling them “terrorists”, the notorious mega prisponent of El Salvador.
Could US citizens convicted of violent crimes next?
“If he is a criminal of his own harvest, I have no problem,” President Donald Trump said to journalists at the Oval office on Monday during his meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
“If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people. Very bad people. As bad as those who enter.”
Before journalists entered the room, Trump even suggested to Bukele that he should build more prisons because the mega prison is not “large enough” to hold “local crazy people” he wants to send from the United States.
“We are studying the laws at this time,” Trump said, after saying before “they always have to obey the law.”
He made a similar comment about sending the Americans to foreign prisons in February, saying that at that time the laws would also be needed.
Several legal experts told ABC News that such scenario would be unconstitutional.
“I do not believe that any president who understands the rule of law or that respects the constitutional democracy in which we live would even think in these terms,” said David Leopold, lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Association Association.
“The United States is home to the citizens of the United States. And citizens cannot be deported, point,” said Leopold.
President Donald Trump meets with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, at the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on April 14, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
“There are numerous constitutional provisions that prevent the president and the Attorney General will send American criminals to prisons in other nations,” said Michael Gerhardt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina.
Several administration officials have been pressed to explain what legal reasons they believe they would allow them to do this. Until now, they have set aside.
“Well, Jesse, these are Americans whom they say they have committed the most atrocious crimes of our country. And the crime will decrease dramatically because it has given us a directive to make the United States safe again,” Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom Trump said specifically he was investigating the problem, said Fox News “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Monday night.
“These people need to be locked all the time they can, while the law allows it. We are not going to let them go anywhere. And if we have to build more prisons in our country, we will do it,” said Bondi, mentioning in particular the sending of Americans to prisons in the United States.
The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was asked on Tuesday whether to deport US citizens to Central American prisons it is legal or if the administration would have to change the law.
“Well, it is another question that the president has raised,” Leavitt replied. “It is a legal question that the president is investigating.”
The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, talks to journalists in the reports of James Brady Press at the White House, on April 15, 2025, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
Trump and other officials said they would deport US criminals who commit “atrocious” crimes. Trump quoted the criminals who “push people to the subway” or “beat ladies older on the back of the head.”
“Of course, we have the right as a government to imprison people who are a danger to society, even to execute people who are dangers for society, but they are Americans, they remain here. That is the initial right of citizenship and has always been,” said Amanda Frost, professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Virginia.
Any effort to deport an American citizen to a prison in El Salvador (his prison of Cecot has been criticized for alleged human rights abuses) or in other places it would probably be a rape of the eighth amendment, which prohibits the cruel and unusual punishment, Frost said.
The Salvadora prison escort alleged that the members of the Venezuelan Gang Train of Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the United States government in the prison of Cecot, in Tecoluca, El Salvador on April 12, 2025.
Press Secretary of the Presidency Via Reuters
A possible escape could be that the Trump administration tries to address naturalized American citizens, who can lose their migratory state if they have committed betrayal or falsified information during their naturalization process. But those instances are rare.
“If someone is a naturalized citizen, there could be an effort to denaturalize that person and deport her,” Frost said. “But then they should commit some type of fraud or error in their naturalization process. An unrelated crime could not be the basis to denaturalize and deport someone.”
Even so, experts were alarmed by Trump’s comments about wanting to send US citizens to foreign prisons, especially because the legal battle with respect to Kilmar Abrego García continues to develop.
Abrego García is detained at Cecot after being unfairly deported by the Trump administration last month. Trump and other officials claim that he is a member of the MS-13 gang, although the administration has provided little evidence of that in court.
The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego García to the United States and says he was illegally deported. Bondi said Monday that “it depends on El Salvador” to return it, and the Salvadoran president, Bukele, said he would not.
“That is chilling,” said Frost, “because if that is his opinion, then assuming that they can get people out of the country, they could raise their hands and say: ‘We cannot do anything about it.'”
ABC News senior political correspondent, Rachel Scott, asked Tuesday’s “border tsar” on Tuesday, Tom Homan, if he believed it was illegal for Trump to send the Americans to a prison in El Salvador. Homan said he has not yet talked to the president.
“The notion is so absurd,” said Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Association Association. “If it were not so frightening that a acting president of the United States so freely uses rhetoric about deporting the citizens of the United States, it would be ridiculous.”
