"I'm all for it. If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I'm all for it," Trump said.

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.

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    491·
    5 months ago

    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?

    • orclev@lemmy.world
      7·
      5 months ago

      Part of the problem is the cold war propaganda was so laser focused on “communism bad” that much of why the USSR was bad was lost. The older generation still have a knee jerk reaction to the word communism that right wing media frequently exploits to generate a cheap emotional reaction by accusing any group they don’t like of being communist. Meanwhile the real horrors of the USSR are largely ignored lest people start drawing parallels with current events.

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
        2·
        5 months ago

        Yes, Americans have somehow come to believe that, among the things the USSR did, providing housing and education to ordinary people is bad, while disappearing people based on their political opinions to be killed or worked to death in gulags is good.