- Proposal Sparks Concern Among Civil Rights Advocates.
- President says any action would follow legal review.
- Floats idea during Salvadoran president’s White House visit.
WASHINGTON, April 14/2025, President Donald Trump said Monday that he wants to deport certain violent criminals who are U.S. citizens to prisons in El Salvador—a proposal that legal experts say would violate U.S. law.
Trump’s remarks offered the strongest indication yet that he is seriously considering the deportation of naturalized and even U.S.-born citizens, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights advocates and is widely viewed by constitutional scholars as unlawful.
Trump stated that he would pursue the proposal only if his administration determined it to be legally permissible. However, it remains unclear what level of due process U.S. citizens would be afforded before being deported to El Salvador—a country the U.S. has previously criticized for serious human rights violations, including arbitrary and harsh detentions.
“We always have to obey the laws,” Trump said during Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s visit to the White House. “But we also have homegrown criminals—people who shove others into subways, who hit elderly women in the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking—absolute monsters.”
“I’d like to include them among those we remove from the country, but we’ll have to review the legal framework first,” Trump added.
Under U.S. law, the government cannot forcibly remove American citizens from the country under any circumstances. In rare cases, however, foreign-born individuals can be stripped of their citizenship and deported—typically if they are found to have committed terrorism, treason, or fraud during the naturalization process.
“There is no provision under U.S. law that would allow the government to kick citizens out of the country,” said Erin Corcoran, an immigration law expert and professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Despite this legal barrier, President Trump told reporters last week that he “loved” the idea of deporting U.S. citizens to El Salvador. His comment followed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s suggestion that the country was open to housing U.S. prisoners.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later confirmed the idea was under consideration, stating that Trump had “simply floated” the proposal. The Trump administration has previously transferred hundreds of migrants accused of gang ties or criminal affiliations to El Salvador’s controversial Terrorism Confinement Center, a high-security mega-prison known for its harsh conditions. The U.S. is currently paying El Salvador $6 million to detain those individuals under often-contested legal authorities.
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