On Tuesday 8 April, the White House confirmed Donald Trump’s desire to have US citizens deported to El Salvadorian prisons.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump was looking at “if there is a legal pathway” to deport US citizens who are “heinous, violent, criminals”.
Trump: deporting… US citizens?
As Reuters reported:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed Donald Trump to pursue deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members using a 1798 law that historically has been employed only in wartime as part of the Republican president’s hardline approach to immigration, but with certain limits.
The court, in an unsigned 5-4 ruling powered by conservative justices, granted the administration’s request to lift Washington-based U.S. Judge James Boasberg’s March 15 order that had temporarily blocked the summary deportations under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act while litigation in the case continues.
Moreover, as it detailed:
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on March 15 to swiftly deport the alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, attempting to speed up removals with a law best known for its use to intern Japanese, Italian and German immigrants during World War Two.
Dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor spelled out what this really means:
Harrowing quote from Sotomayor’s dissent from today’s SCOTUS decision giving Trump the green light to keep disappearing people. pic.twitter.com/VHlALXhD58
— Eric Lee (@EricLeeAtty) April 7, 2025
So now, the court has effectively greenlit Trump’s administration deporting US citizens for imprisonment, under wartime laws because – *checks notes* – it feels like it:
Don’t really see anyone talking about this but the nations highest court has decided it’s legal for this administration to kidnap citizens and sell them to a concentration camp in El Salvador https://t.co/QJ2uxnMuqt
— barbarism critic (@barbarismcrit) April 8, 2025
US citizen already trapped in an El Salvadoran mega-prison
Only a few days ago, Trump said during an interview with Newsweek that:
If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us – I’m all for it. . .
Why should it stop just for people who cross the border illegally? We have some horrible criminals. American grown and born
And the kicker with this Supreme Court ruling? Trump has already sent a US citizen one a one-way ticket to the maximum security ‘Terrorism Confinement Center’ of the repressive El Salvadoran regime.
Last month, the US deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia from his home in Maryland. He was taken into custody, and eventually found himself in El Salvador – at a prison notorious for housing gang members. Since then, the US government have said that he was deported due to an ‘administrative error’.
We are now at a moment in this country’s history where anyone, noncitizen or U.S citizen, can be apprehended, put on a plane, and end up in another country’s prison. https://t.co/4TP8J2qxVi
— Victor Narro (@NarroVictor) April 8, 2025
Even so, he is still locked up and unable to return home to his young son. According to the BBC, Trump officials are now claiming they cannot force El Salvador to return Garcia.
Call it what it is… fascism
However, this is also just the tip of the iceberg – or – the immigration enforcement ICEberg if you like. This is because the so-called “land of the free” under Trump’s steer has been literally kidnapping citizens and non-citizens alike.
If you’re a student speaking out against Israel’s genocide in Palestine – the state will nab you. A scholar criticising the US for its complicity in Gaza? Prepare to be detained. Maybe you’re a British backpacker – detained for weeks by ICE. Or perhaps a British punk rock band or a French scientist who has made anti-Trump comments: denied entry.
The point is, if you say something Trump doesn’t like, the violent policing arms of MAGAland can silence you – by literally spiriting you away to wherever the felon president fancies.
Let’s call all this what it is: authoritarian fascism, plain and simple:
This is the problem with Fascism.
If we don’t recognise it & tirelessly & comprehensively root it out when it is a vulnerable, isolated weed in each successive generation, it will become an invasive knotweed that becomes increasingly difficult to destroy. https://t.co/rFItPB8kwc
— Chintan Nanavati (@LightHealing) April 8, 2025
You now live in an authoritarian state https://t.co/hvox75wf1V
— Bern (@Berniedogg) April 8, 2025
Trump and Biden: two sides of the same coin
But let’s be real – the UK and US right now are two sides of the same coin.
And perhaps it’s little wonder that spineless Starmer eyeing up a trade deal with the US, has made not even a mealy-mouthed attempt at calling out Trump’s repressive administration. After all, the state here has weaponised anti-terrorism laws to go after journalists and activists speaking against Israel.
In fact, only today the Canary’s Steve Topple has reported on the preposterous draconian ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’ powers the Met Police wielded to nick Youth Demand protesters.
Ultimately, none of this is a far cry from Trump’s disappearing of citizens. The deportation to El Salvador’s human rights violating detention facility might be a step further down the line towards fascism, but the parallels are scarily similar all the same.
The Trump Regime will keep disappearing people the way other White Supremacist and Fascistic regimes do in the rest of the world. https://t.co/bMjLap5WGN
— RiShawn Biddle (@dropoutnation) April 8, 2025
People are really arguing with me about this when the WH just confirmed they are planning to deport citizens pic.twitter.com/BxDbRN0p5L https://t.co/nwAcTClwKo
— barbarism critic (@barbarismcrit) April 8, 2025
What democracy with Trump?
The Supreme Court ruling upends any notion that the US is a democracy. Before the fascist felon president, US administrations operated in some pseudo-democratic fashion – though arguably, the corporatisation of the US had long been in play.
Now, Trump has blown this blatant myth wide open. What the Supreme Court ruling and Garcia’s case has shown is that the US is rapidly careering into full-blown fascism. If a government can simply ignore all the checks and balances that prevent it from authoritarianism, gone should be any sense that it is a bastion of democracy.
However, the US has been treating marginalised communities like this since time immemorial. To Black and brown communities, chronically ill and disabled people, migrants, and others, it never really was anything but a playground for the fascistic corporate capitalist tendencies of the rich.
The US elected a convicted felon as a president. Now, that criminal is getting away with sending US citizens to what amounts to foreign concentration camps – and keeping them there despite false charges.
Welcome to Trump’s America. The land of the free market predatory billionaires, but certainly not the land of the free.
Feature image via the Canary
