WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump stepped up his extraordinary threats to send Americans to foreign jails, saying Tuesday he would love to deport “homegrown” US citizens who commit violent crimes to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.
Trump raised the idea in talks on Monday with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele — the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” who has already taken detained migrants from the United States into his country’s jails.
But the 78-year-old Republican doubled down on the idea of sending US citizens to El Salvador too, amid fundamental questions about whether it would actually be legal.
“I call them homegrown criminals,” Trump said according to excerpts of an interview with Fox Noticias, a Spanish-language program being broadcast later Tuesday.
“The ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat and push people into subways,” he added.
“We are looking into it and we want to do it. I would love to do it.”
On Monday, Trump said during his meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office that he had asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine the possibility of sending Americans to El Salvador.
The White House said Tuesday it was still exploring whether such a move would be within the law.
“It’s a legal question that the president is looking into,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists at a briefing.
“He would only consider this, if legal, for Americans who are the most violent egregious repeat offenders of crime who nobody in this room wants living in their communities.”
The iron-fisted Bukele made the extraordinary offer to take in prisoners from the United States shortly after Trump’s inauguration for a second term.
Trump has already sent more than 250 migrants there, mostly under a centuries-old wartime law that deprives them of due process — in exchange for a fee of $6 million paid to El Salvador.
But he has increasingly started talking about sending US citizens to foreign jails too.
Trump’s administration already faces pressure over the case of a migrant who was mistakenly deported from the United States to El Salvador under the Bukele deal.
Bukele on Monday dismissed the “preposterous” idea of returning the man — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father who was living in the US state of Maryland — to the United States.
The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return from the notorious jail after the White House said he was deported after an “administrative error.”
Trump officials insist he is an illegal migrant and a member of El Salvador’s notorious MS-13 gang, despite never having been convicted.
Trump says would ‘love’ to send US citizens to El Salvador jail
https://arab.news/67y4u
Trump says would ‘love’ to send US citizens to El Salvador jail
‘Stay out of our politics,’ Australia’s former PM tells Netenyahu
- Turnbull slams Israeli prime minister in Channel 4 interview
- Netanyahu’s attempts to link Bondi massacre to Palestine policy ‘unhelpful’
LONDON: Australia’s former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has told Benjamin Netanyahu to “stay out of our politics” after the Israeli leader linked the recognition of Palestine to the Bondi Beach mass shooting.
Fifteen people were killed when a father and son opened fire on people celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday evening.
Netanyahu said Australia's decision to recognize Palestinian statehood earlier this year had poured “oil on the fire of antisemitism” in the weeks leading up to the attack.
When asked about the comments on Channel 4 News in the UK, Turnbull said: “I would respectfully say to Bibi Netanyahu, please stay out of our politics.
“If you've got that kind of commentary to make, you are not helping … and it’s not right.”
Turnbull backed the current Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government for recogizing Palestinian statehood in August along with many other Western nations as international pressure grew over the war in Gaza.
In a speech after the Bondi attack, Netanyahu said: “A few months ago I wrote to the Australian prime minister that your policy is pouring oil on the fire of antisemitism.”
He added: “Antisemitism is a cancer that spreads when leaders are silent.”
Turnbull said the vast majority of countries in the world recognize Palestine as a state and support a two-state solution to the conflict.
He said Australia is a very successful multicultural society that can not allow foreign conflicts to be imported.
“We need to ensure that that wars in the Middle East or wars in any other part of the world are not fought out here,” he said. “Trying to link them, which is what Netanyahu has done, is not helpful and that's exactly the reverse of what we want to achieve.”
Albanese also rejected Netanyahu’s comments when asked about whether there was a link between his approach to Palestine and the Bondi attack.
“Overwhelmingly, most of the world recognizes a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East,” he told broadcasters. “This is a moment of national unity where we need to come together … We need to wrap our arms around members of the Jewish community who are going through an extraordinarily difficult period.”
Albanese visited in hospital the man hailed a s hero for disarming one of the attackers.
Ahmed Al-Ahmed, a shopkeeper who moved to Australia from Syria in 2007, is recovering after tackling the gunman.
