‘I’d Be Very Happy’: Trump Floats Sending Jailed US Citizens to Prisons in El Salvador
Issue would face question of "cruel and unusual punishment"
Donald Trump is floating the idea of sending US citizens serving prison sentences to prisons in El Salvador instead.
He made his remarks during an availability with media Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Trump was asked about comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which Rubio announced a deal this week that would allow potentially American citizens who are criminals to be sent to a different country.
There’s a constitutional question about whether sending Americans to serve sentences abroad would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which bars “cruel and unusual” punishments.
But Trump said he was in favor of the idea.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he would want the United States to pay a fee to house American prisoners.
“A very small fee compared to what we pay to private prisons, a very, very small fee. I don’t know. We’ll have to find that out legally. I’m just saying, if we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump said. “I don’t know if we do it now. We’re looking at that right now. But we could make deals where we could get these animals out of our country. And, you know, if you take the shooters, the people that hit old ladies in the back of the head with a baseball bat, when they’re not looking, they walk down the street, the people that you — and you see it, the people that take out a gun and shoot you for no reason at all.
“If we could get these animals out of our country and put them in a different country under the supervision of somebody that made a relatively small fee to maintain these people. Because you know what? These are criminals. You call them hardened criminals,” he added.
Trump suggested that sending Americans to prison in El Salvador would cut US crime.
“If that took place, you would have a lot less crime automatically,” he said.
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