Trump Says He's Exploring Option To Send Imprisoned U.S. Citizens To Other Countries
HuffPost
“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was exploring whether he can move forward with El Salvador’s offer to accept and jail violent American criminals in the “most severe cases” even as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both say it raises clear legal issues.
Rubio reached an unusual agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele a day earlier that the Central American country would accept U.S. deportees of any nationality, including American citizens and legal residents who are imprisoned for violent crimes.
“I’m just saying if we had a legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I don’t know if we do or not, we’re looking at that right now.”
Hours earlier at a news conference in San Jose with Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, Rubio said there were “obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution.”
Rubio noted that it was “a very generous offer. No one’s ever made an offer like that — and to outsource, at a fraction of the cost, at least some of the most dangerous and violent criminals that we have in the United States.”
