The hosts of Fox & Friends expressed confusion over President Donald Trump’s plan to send “homegrown criminals” to a mega-prison in El Salvador.
The president discussed the idea with El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele—an ally in Trump’s agenda to expel undocumented immigrants without due process—during a White House visit on Monday.
The Fox News morning show panel picked up on the story Tuesday morning, with host Steve Doocy struggling to comprehend how Trump might push his plan over the line from a legal perspective.
“They might do something with the ‘homegrowns,’ people from the United States,” he said, after his colleague Ainsley Earhardt mused about the U.S. potentially building more mega-prisons like those in El Salvador.
“I don’t know exactly how that would work, more on that throughout the day,” Doocy added, with none other than Trump acolyte Brian Kilmeade momentarily becoming the voice of reason.
“Legally, that might be challenging,” he said, leading Doocy to quip: “I can’t imagine!”
Former U.S. attorney Harry Litman said Monday in an appearance on CNN that Trump’s plan to send American criminals to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center would violate the Constitution. Similarly, Leti Volpp, a law professor at UC Berkeley, previously told CNN the U.S. is “absolutely prohibited from deporting U.S. citizens, whether they are incarcerated or not.”
The president was overheard Monday whispering about his plans to Bukele as he entered the Oval Office. “Homegrown criminals next,” he said.
“I said homegrown’s the next,” he repeated, raising his voice. “The homegrowns. You got to build about five more places.”
He later added: “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem [deporting them].”
The Trump administration has ignored judges’ orders to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was deported to El Salvador on March 15, to the United States. / Abrego Garcia Family/Handout via Reuters
Trump has deported about 250 migrants in the last month alone under the Alien Enemies Act. That number includes Kilmar Abrego Garcia, man who the Justice Department admitted was sent erroneously to El Salvador after living in Maryland for 15 years.
Trump’s government has dragged its heels on getting Abrego home, and it looks like the Maryland father will get little help from Bukele. Asked if he would facilitate the 29-year-old’s return to the U.S., he said Monday in the Oval Office: “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?”
Doocy and Kilmeade’s surprising surprising dialogue about the issue came after Earhardt demanded tougher conditions for American criminals.
Even she, however, pushed the boat out—suggesting that prisons in the U.S. should be more like those in the Central American country domestically.
“The neighborhoods are cleaned up because of this president,” she said of Bukele, adding: “And it’s because if you get caught doing something illegally down there, you are thrown in in these maximum security prisons. And you are treated the way you see in these videos. If we did that here in America, maybe the crime would go down even more.”
Human Rights Watch investigated CECOT, the mega-prison Abrego was sent to in Tecoluca, El Salvador, and found several glaring breaches.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, pictured with Trump in the Oval Office, said he could not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. / Win McNamee/Getty Images
Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas division of the international non-governmental organization, testified during a Supreme Court case against the Trump administration that the facility is packed, meaning that individualized treatment is unlikely to be given to detainees, including Abrego.
She added that inmates are also denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, and only appear before courts in online hearings—hundreds of people at a time.
Bukele’s government has described CECOT prisoners as “terrorists” and has said they “will never leave.” The government also denies human rights groups access to its prisons.
