Summary
Trump expressed support for sending American citizens to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, praising President Bukele’s tough-on-crime stance.
The U.S. already deported 238 Venezuelans there under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, despite federal judges calling the transfers unlawful and ordering returns.
Trump said he’d be “honored” to send repeat U.S. offenders abroad if legal. Critics, including judges and rights advocates, condemned the plan as unconstitutional and authoritarian.
Legal experts warn no U.S. law permits outsourcing American incarceration, raising serious due process and human rights concerns.
I’m curious about how well-informed most Americans are about the Soviet Union. Do they know that it was once a place where ordinary people were accused of crimes without evidence, taken away without a trial, and never seen again? Do they know that this generally happened because of the smallest suspicion that a person was not fanatically loyal to the government, rather than a violent criminal? Do they know that a million people were killed this way? And do they know that the Soviet Union was one of many places like that?
I expect that the Soviet Union doesn’t seem particularly relevant to younger generations of voters, but isn’t this the sort of lurid history that did interest them as adolescents? And don’t older voters remember the Cold War?
I wonder how many Americans know that this was the reality in Chile, after the USA funded and supported a coup that killed the elected president in the only truly stable and functional democracy of South America at the time, in order to instate a ruthless dictator.
