Trump Says He Would ‘love’ To Send Violent American Citizens To Foreign Prisons

President Donald Trump doubled down this week on his proposal to send American citizens to foreign prisons.

“I would love to do that if it were permissible by law,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine that was conducted on Tuesday and published Friday. “We're looking into that.”

The comment comes after Trump said earlier this month in a Fox News interview that his administration is looking into the legality of sending “homegrown criminals” — American citizens — to foreign prisons, most notably in El Salvador. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has welcomed the proposal.

“If you ask me whether or not I would do that, I would,” Trump told Time. “People are looking to see if it would be allowed under law.”

In the Fox interview where he made his initial comments, Trump said his administration was “all for” sending violent American criminals to prisons overseas and that he was impressed by Bukele’s maximum security prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. The Trump administration has so far deported hundreds of undocumented migrants to the Salvadoran prison, in most cases with minimal, if any, due process.

When pressed by Time on the specifics, Trump appeared defensive, responding that for “career criminals,” he has “absolutely no problem” with deporting them to the Central American country. Trump said the U.S. was paying Bukele “less than we would normally” for housing the prisoners.

In the Oval Office with Trump two weeks ago, Bukele said he wouldn't return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was illegally deported to El Salvador last month. “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him? Of course I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said. “The question is preposterous.”

The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, but Trump officials remain defiant.

“That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the Oval Office this month of the case. “If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it.”

The Abrego Garcia case has since garnered significant blowback from Democrats, most notably from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who traveled to El Salvador to meet with the wrongfully deported Marylander last week.

On Thursday, a U.S. District Judge ruled that the Trump administration must return a second man who was illegally deported from the U.S. to El Salvador in violation of a previous court order. The 20-year-old Venezuelan man was deported in March in violation of a court-approved settlement agreement which was reached last year.