Trump Threatens to Send U.S. Citizens who Protest to the Salvadoran Gulag
Donald Trump is now combining multiple strains of executive abuse. He has already attempted to prop up his biggest supporter, Elon Musk’s, tanking Tesla sales by holding a photo-op at the White House. He has also been sending immigrants to prison in El Salvador without due process. It’s inevitable that he would try to combine the two.
CNBC reports:
President Donald Trump suggested Friday that people found guilty of attacking Tesla properties could serve their sentences in El Salvador prisons, sharply ramping up his rhetoric in defense of Elon Musk’s company amid an intensifying backlash. …
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote in the social media post Friday morning.
“Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!” he wrote, referring to his administration’s controversial deportation of alleged gang members. …
None of the defendants has been charged with “domestic terrorism,” which is not a federal offense.
To send citizens to a foreign prison, outside U.S. jurisdiction and the protection of our laws, would take the violation of their rights by this administration to yet new heights. It’s also a reminder that the cruelty of Trump’s policy toward immigrants is a preview of what he will do to the native-born.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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