Deporting immigrants is a huge part of what President Donald Trump’s first days in office are focused on, and while that’s been a hotly debated subject, he recently floated another idea: Deporting American citizens who are “repeat offenders” of violent crimes. Is this legal? Does that matter to Trump?
The president was speaking to House GOP members in Doral, Fl. recently, and he brought up violent criminals. This is separate, by the way, from the migrants who already have huge criminal records, according to Trump.
Trump’s comments were couched under the idea of a cost-saving measure for the U.S. government. He said the offenders “break into apartments” and “rape elderly women” and “beat up” elderly men, “beat ’em to hell.” Trump knows elderly whites are a huge part of his supporters, so he apparently likes to keep them afraid.
“I want them out of our country,” he said of these so-called criminals, saying that if they’ve been arrested “many, many times” then he wants to get approval to get them “the hell out of our country.” How would this save money? Per Trump, they could be brought to a foreign land and other people would take care of them for “a very small fee.”
This would take some of the financial pressure off the government to the tune of “massive amounts of money” and also help to handle the problem of private prisons, which the president said “charge us a fortune.” Cutting the federal budget is one of Trump’s biggest directives, along with kicking out migrants and appointing an accused anti-vaxxer as health and human services secretary.
Ironically, what Trump would be doing to another country is part of what sparked the American Revolution. For more than 100 years, from the 1600s to 1776, Britain sent criminals to the United States to be punished. After Britain couldn’t send criminals to America anymore, they settled on Australia.
Trump’s efforts to cut spending saw the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, which is being led by billionaire Elon Musk. As for these American criminals, he said, some of them have “been arrested 30 times, 35 times, 41, 42 times.”
Crime, he argued, would practically disappear if his administration was able to ship these people out of the country so they could live somewhere else, and be someone else’s problem. “Let them be brought out of our country and let them live there for a while,” Trump said. “Let’s see how they like it.”
The practice of penal transportation is one that was used back in the olden times but has fallen out of fashion in the modern day. Americans are guaranteed rights when they are arrested for crimes, one being a trial by a jury of peers and legal representation. What Trump is saying would essentially mean a reworking of the whole criminal justice system. That seems unlikely, especially considering Trump just says a lot of stuff.
However, it’s never wise to just dismiss his words as fly-by-night asides. He’s definitely kept his promise of deporting immigrants. He even forced the government of Colombia to accept planes of deportees or face terrible economic sanctions.
Published: Jan 29, 2025 02:02 pm