"You might think your U.S. passport protects you. But what if your own president decides it doesn't?"

In a moment that should have sent a shiver down every American’s spine, former President Donald Trump, during an Oval Office meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, proposed a plan that — if enacted — would violate constitutional law, human rights norms, and the basic expectations of citizenship: the deportation of violent U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison.

The meeting, held on April 14, 2025, was filled with smiles, handshakes, and the kind of authoritarian admiration that’s become increasingly routine in Trump’s orbit. At one point, Trump gestured toward the brutalist, highly surveilled prison Bukele constructed and declared that the U.S. might need to send some of its worst offenders there — suggesting Bukele "build about five more places like that." He instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into legal pathways to make this happen.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about Trump floating a bad idea. This is about a former president and likely 2024 frontrunner proposing the forcible removal of U.S. citizens from their own country as a form of punishment — and doing so on camera, in the White House, with the eager support of a foreign strongman.

What Makes This So Dangerous

• Deportation of citizens is unconstitutional. The United States cannot remove its own citizens — whether natural-born or naturalized — unless that person has actively renounced their citizenship or committed fraud during the naturalization process. This is legal bedrock. Even in cases of treason, the penalty is incarceration or execution within the United States — not exile.
• It undermines due process. Trump's proposal effectively discards trial-based justice. It circumvents American courts and hands over punishment to foreign actors whose systems do not align with U.S. standards of legal protection.
• It weaponizes fear. By dangling the idea of foreign imprisonment — especially in a country whose president boasts about mass incarceration and rule by force — Trump taps into a playbook of dehumanization and authoritarian pageantry. His supporters don’t just cheer the policy. They cheer the humiliation, the control.
• It signals legal nihilism. The fact that this discussion took place days after Trump’s administration refused to comply with a Supreme Court order to return a wrongly deported man (Kilmar Abrego Garcia) underscores the administration’s contempt for judicial authority. If rulings can be ignored and rights selectively applied, then the rule of law becomes theater.

Bukele's Prison, Trump’s Fantasy

CECOT isn’t just a detention center. It’s a symbol. A monolithic, militarized stage set designed for Bukele’s PR campaigns — one where prisoners are stripped, stacked, and displayed like commodities. The human rights abuses are well-documented. And Trump? He loves it.

That admiration isn't incidental. It’s aspirational. The image of criminals being vanished from society into a fortress of concrete and silence — no legal delays, no appeals, no ACLU — fits neatly into the worldview Trump has promoted since 2016.

A Chilling Precedent

Even if this plan never becomes law — even if no U.S. citizen is ever shipped off to El Salvador in handcuffs — the fact that it’s being openly discussed sets a new bar for what authoritarianism looks like in America.

It’s no longer hypothetical.

This is what drift looks like when it hits full acceleration.

For the original Watch Signal tracking this event, see:
“Trump's new favorite authoritarian is helping him sidestep court orders”