The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said Monday that he wants to deport some violent criminals who are US citizens of Salvadoran prisons, a measure that experts said he would violate US law.
Trump’s comments marked the clearest signal until the president of the United States takes seriously the deportation of naturalized citizens and born in the United States, a proposal that has alarmed civil rights defenders and is seen by many legal scholars and unconstitutional.
Trump said he would only continue with the idea if his administration determined that it was legal.
It was not clear what process level would receive an American before being deported to a country that Washington was previously accused of serious human rights abuses, including hard and arbitrary arrests.
“We always have to obey the laws, but we also have our own harvest criminals that push people to the subway, who hit the old ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they are not looking, which are absolute monsters,” Trump told journalists during the visit of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to the White House.
“I would like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you will have to look at the laws about it,” Trump added.
The United States government cannot forcefully eliminate citizens of the country for any reason, although in rare cases, citizens born abroad can be stripped of citizenship and deportees if they commit terrorism or betrayal or are found that they have lied to their background during the naturalization process.
“There is no disposition under the law of the United States that allows the government to expel citizens of the country,” said Professor of the University of Notre Dame, Erin Corcoran, an expert in immigration law.
Trump told journalists last week that he “loved” the idea of deporting citizens to El Salvador, after Bukele said the country was open to the accommodation of US prisoners.
The White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later confirmed that the proposal was on the table, saying that Trump had “simply floated” the idea.
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of migrants accused of criminal affiliations to the hard mega-prison of El Salvador, known as the Center for Confinement of Terrorism, under the legal authorities often expelled. The United States is paying $ 6 million to arrest migrants.
