After the Trump administration deported hundreds of undocumented migrants accused of being violent gang members to El Salvador, President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to imply he will explore deporting U.S. citizens who commit violent crimes.
“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump told reporters inside the Oval Office while hosting El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has cooperated with the Trump administration by accepting deportees to his country and holding them in prisons.
“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country,” added Trump. The president emphasized that he would only do so by following the law, though he admitted, “I don’t know what the laws are.” Trump explained that Attorney General Pam Bondi is studying the law on the matter.
Trump’s remarks on Monday signal an escalation of an unprecedented (and likely illegal) proposal to deport U.S. citizens. It follows similar statements from Trump’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said last week that the president was looking into deporting “heinous, violent criminals” who are U.S. citizens to El Salvador, adding, “if there’s a legal pathway to do that.”
The proposal is getting much pushback and condemnation from civil rights and immigration advocates. Jamarr Brown, executive director at Color of Change PAC, told theGrio he is concerned about what this means for Black American citizens.
“A policy that even considers targeting American citizens lays the groundwork for mass deportation campaigns that will disproportionately impact Black immigrants, including Haitians, Jamaicans, and others from the Caribbean and across the diaspora,” said Brown. “This is not just about immigration. It’s about the erosion of democracy, the…
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