Immigration detention centers are already past capacity, but the Trump administration says it’s found a new place to send some migrants: foreign prison.
It would be expensive and in some cases illegal, according to experts. Lawmakers aren’t sure whether it will actually happen — but even if not, some considered it a smart means of deterrence.
“If it ends up happening, it’s serious. But if it scares them off, it’s even better,” Rep. Tim Burchett said. “That seems to be Trump’s plan, and it’s working very well.”
In a press conference Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the president of El Salvador had agreed to accept any migrant “who is a criminal, from any nationality, and house them in his jails.” On Wednesday, a similar agreement was announced with Guatemala, who has said it would accept deportation flights of migrants from other countries.
So far, no migrants have been sent to El Salvador or Guatemala under these agreements. The Department of Homeland Security directed questions to the White House, which did not respond to a request for comment.
The administration has already begun the controversial move of sending migrants to Guantanamo Bay.
Sen. Mark Kelly said these moves showed that Trump should be taken seriously.
“He’s doing these things just to intimidate people. It sounds scary to send people to Guantánamo, and he doesn’t seem to really care about the cost,” Kelly said. “El Salvador, I think is the same thing.”
It’s legal to send migrants to a safe third country if they’re being deported, but sending migrants who are in the middle of a criminal sentence, as El Salvador proposed, is legally questionable. Unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. go through the regular justice system and, if convicted, serve their sentences in federal or state jails and prisons before potentially being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported.
It’s unclear whether it would be legal to send migrants who are currently serving their sentences to complete them in another country. It’s also unclear what would happen when their sentences finish, especially if their home country won’t take them back.
Taking El Salvador up on its offer to take U.S. criminals would be even more legally fraught.
“He has offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals,” Rubio said. “Including those of U.S. citizenship and legal residents. No country has ever made an offer of friendship such as this.”
On Wednesday, many members of Congress hadn’t yet formed an opinion on the idea, declining to comment or admitting they hadn’t seen any more details on the possible partnership.
“I’m certainly fine with finding a landing space, but I’d need to study more the specifics,” Rep. Chip Roy said. “If we can do an agreement with a country to take migrants that we need to remove, be they violent criminals or criminals by virtue of just being here, I’m for that, but I need to understand what it looks like and the law and all that.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego said he would need more details, adding that Trump “always has stupid ideas.”
“It’s going to be very expensive,” Gallego said of sending migrants to El Salvador. “For all this stuff, we need to have more details of where, who’s going and what is the plan.”
As always with Trump, not everyone was sure they needed to take the prospect seriously.
“Trump says lots of things. We’ll see what he ultimately does,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján said.
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.