White House Confirms Trump Is Exploring Ways to 'Deport' U.S. Citizens | Hacker News Reader

White House Confirms Trump Is Exploring Ways to 'Deport' U.S. Citizens

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Did they get an all-you-can-deport deal on that 6 million paid to Bukele? Why are they so obsessed with using that prison? Did I get trapped in a dystopian story or an Onion article, or is this real life?

Some talking points that the right would say if they weren't the ones doing this: "foreign countries are better at prison than we are now", we need to "bring back prison jobs for Americans", and "why is taxpayer money going to foreign countries?" I didn't think I would be rooting for American prison industry, but now they're more humane than the alternative.

See also: Bukele refusing to return a prisoner the US Supreme Court says should not have been deported. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5364502/trump-bukele-el...

> Why are they so obsessed with using that prison?

Implausible legal deniability.

"Bukele refusing" is total nonsense. Trump could demand that man be returned, and he'd be in the US tomorrow. This entire performance is a charade being scripted by the White House.

ETA: it is also a hard kick in the teeth of the Supreme Court, which seems to have been offering him an off-ramp. I wonder where this goes next.

Indeed, Bukele can refuse in the same way my boss cannot literally gun-to-my-head compel me to file TPS reports. If Trump actually meant it and started bouncing cheques for the other prisoners, he would move quickly. Instead they coordinate this ratchet effect where they take combined action and then pretend to be completely ineffectual when it is found to be illegal and ordered to be undone.

The biggest problem here is that about a week ago, the Court reduced the legal protections afforded to potential deportees. They can still petition the Courts for due process, but it will have to be in local courts in Texas and Lousiana, and under a new interpretation of habeas that even Justice Amy Coney Barrett took issue with.

So to recap: weakened protection of law preventing you from being deported, once deported you can never come home. Excellent work by the Supreme Court.

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/judge-labeled-radical...

> I wonder where this goes next.

Well, JD Vance has been calling for Trump to defy the courts since at least 2021 and thinks the courts already started a constitutional crisis by checking the executive.[1] Maybe he missed some days in law school, or high school. Hope he can get a crash course on checks and balances soon.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/jd-vance-t...

It's a lot of things. Their reputation, their legal jurisdiction (outside the US), that it's available now, etc.

The administration is using it as a trial run for bigger things. They're already talking about building more, negotiating with other countries, etc.

Right now it's just seeing how the courts will react and if/what consequences there will be, and what loopholes they can use. It's why they're actively fighting against getting back the get "accidently" deported from Maryland. They're hoping they can set a precedent that once outside the country, they're no longer accountable/responsible for human rights/due process afforded by the constitution. It sets up a blueprint to disappear any US citizen (read political opponents/dissidents) with impunity.

Edit: in regards to El Salvador saying it's preposterous to give him back. His comment and the US administration act as if they're being asked to smuggle him past the Coast Guard in the dead of night, give him a gun, and free him in the woods. It's ridiculous. Give him back in the same way he was delivered, in cuffs, on a plane, and handed over to the local authorities.

Yep, Bukele's response was sickeningly effective. Basically boiling down to Trump and Bukele both saying they can do nothing due to the sovereignty of the other, knowing full well they could convince each other if they actually wanted to. Throw in a misdirection with an absurd implication nobody was making (smuggling a terrorist).

"What to do if you're a U.S. citizen and immigration authorities tell you to leave the country" - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-citizens-email-notic...

he was also caught on hot mic today telling Bukele

"home-growns are next... you're going to need to build about five more places"

https://bsky.app/profile/coreyryung.bsky.social/post/3lmrygf...

"home grown criminals", around the 7 minute mark.

https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1911803520845545960?s=46

> criminals

At the risk of stating the obvious: This qualifier is void. Trump thinks anything people say that he doesn't like is criminal or can be made-to-be.

FFS the man has said a 60 Minutes' interview with President Zelenskyy (which painted Trump in an unflattering light) is a crime that validates destroying an entire television network.

> At the risk of stating the obvious: This qualifier is void.

So it's okay to deceptively edit it out? Seems shady.

"Herr Hitler clearly said that he would only be sending criminals to the next round of concentration camps, editing that out seems shady."

The most-charitable explanation is that you are clueless about current events, and don't understand that the government is already committing crimes against innocent people and lying about it.

Otherwise:

> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946

"Criminals" is a meaningless word in Trump's America.

You'll have an easier time holding the moral high ground if you can avoid engaging in/blocking for deceptive messaging.

it was not deceptive. the words I wrote were said by Trump verbatim. please watch the video. I didn't remove the word "criminal" from the middle of the sentence.

I quoted directly from the video. the quote I wrote was said verbatim

It's a bit worrying there seems no due process involved and with the gay makeup artist Andry Jose Hernandez Romero who was mistakenly sent as a gang member they don't seem to be making any effort to free him and say oops sorry. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14600433/cop-venezu...

Democrats might want to issue a warning, that should they continue with this - a full embargo against El Salvador will be in order, when they get in power.

The US is paying El Salvador to take the prisoners. Presumably they could just stop paying if they don't want that?

Abrego Garcia's lawyer has asked the court to withhold payment[1]. They may have already paid it all ($6 million for 300 prisoners for a year); I don't know of a source about any payment schedule. And this is Trump administration paying it, so nobody but Trump or courts probably has legal power to stop paying now.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250402000938/https://www.theat...

> when they get in power

While warning Bukele can't hurt, this qualifier seems a little complacent. It's been almost 3 months since Trump took office, and we're already at the phase where the Republican party is kidnapping people off the streets and throwing them into gulag for the rest of their lives without trial or even the pretense of particular charges.

Meanwhile, an unprecedented political purge is firing staff everywhere to make room for the President's personal loyalists, import taxes are being created (and re-re-re-reversed) willy-nilly without the legislature, Trump wants to be able to strip people's citizenship, etc.

Unfun fact: It was ~2 months after elections that Hitler's first victims arrived at the Dachau concentration camp.

That's an empty threat. Trump might not get a 3rd term but it seems pretty clear that Dems are disaffected for the foreseeable future, perhaps permanently.

I believe Trump is going to disillusion so many voters with his tariff trainwreck, that it will be nigh on impossible for any republican candidate to win the next election.

I also believe that many, far too many US voters care more about what their groceries and consumer goods cost, than the civil rights of their fellow man...and that is what ultimately decides who they'll vote for.

I think what we're going to see is that republicans won't receive much blame for groceries and consumer good costs rising. I also think outside of extreme events (e.g. COVID) the vast majority of the voting public doesn't really understand how to judge the health of the economy, and instead only defers to the economy as a post-facto rationalization for what they were already leaning towards.

The tariff chaos is on everyone's mind right now so it seems as if people genuinely care, but in reality it's just a function of the media attention cycle. By the time the next elections come along, complaining about tariffs is going to be a boring talking point that democrats mistakenly think is a winner, but the public will have already moved on to the next thing.

Stooping: validating that embargoes/tariffs/whatever are valid.

I would hope that some group can show a moral path through this mess. Trump is often escalating techniques, and I'm guessing escalating them further is the next step when he's finally deposed.

The fact that El Salvador is facing zero international consequences for any of this is telling.

Not my original opinion, but: any future Democratic Presidential candidate needs to make it clear that we will absolutely invade any country that holds U.S. citizens against our laws.

What good will that do? If he's going to do it, it will start well before the next election, and I don't think it's going to change anyone's vote either.

It sends a very clear marker to countries that collaborate with the current administration to violate our Constitutional rights. It says: "if you do this, you'd better hope that this administration never loses power, because you will regret what happens to you when they're gone."

I'm not sure democrats or really anyone wants to invade places like North Korea and possibly start a nuclear war with an unhinged monarchy. El Salvador is obviously a much safer place to wage war against, but I don't think it's a position that can be maintained universally.

> any future Democratic Presidential candidate needs to make it clear that we will absolutely invade any country that holds U.S. citizens against our laws

Just vow to arrest the individuals involved in the kidnappings and maybe offer a pardon to those who non-violently oppose them.

This isn't a handful of individuals, it's the President of El Salvador and his government.

It just gets more and more surreal. And frightening.

It’s time for the SCOTUS to deputize the country to enforce the consequences of contempt of court that the US is doing.

Before you ask, yes, technically the SCOTUS can do this.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43682136

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