Trump wants to send U.S. citizens there
The emergency is here.
The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not another Supreme Court ruling away from happening. It’s happening now.
Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We know their names. We know their stories.
The president of the United States is disappearing people to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists, a prison known by its initials — CECOT. A prison built for disappearance. A prison where there is no education or remediation or recreation, because it is a prison that does not intend to release its inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the only way out, in the words of El Salvador’s so-called justice minister, is a coffin.
On Monday, President Trump said, in the Oval Office, in front of the cameras, sitting next to President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, that he would like to do this to U.S. citizens as well.
Archived clip of Donald Trump: “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we’re studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.”
He told Bukele that he would need to build five more of these prisons because America has so many people Trump wants to send to them.
Archived clip of Donald Trump: “Why? Do you think there’s a special category of person? They’re as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, too. And I’m all for it. Because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security. And we have a huge prison population. We have a huge number of prisons. And then we have the private prisons, and some are operated well, I guess, and some aren’t.”
Why do we need El Salvador’s prisons? We have prisons here. But for the Trump administration, El Salvador’s prisons are the answer to the problem of American law.
The Trump administration holds the view that anyone they send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law — they have been disappeared not only from our country but from our system — and from any protection or process that system affords.
In our prisons, prisoners can be reached by our lawyers, by our courts, by our mercy. In El Salvador, they cannot.
Names. Stories. Let me tell you one of their names, one of their stories, as best we know it.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. His mother, Cecilia, ran a pupuseria in San Salvador. A local gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the business, demanding monthly and then weekly payments. If the family didn’t pay, Barrio 18 threatened to murder Kilmar’s brother Cesar or to rape their sisters.
Eventually, Barrio 18 demanded Cesar join their gang, at which point the family sent Cesar to America. Then Barrio 18 demanded the same of Kilmar, and Kilmar, at age 16, was sent to America, too.
This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.