And these thugs are getting quite the firm welcome. President Donald Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration and invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport foreigners, including but not limited to those with criminal records, deemed a danger by the U.S. government.
The act confers “extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners” during times of war, invasion or predatory incursion, who otherwise would have legal protections.
The Trump team has claimed, (correctly in my view) that gangs of foreign criminals, and drug cartels, many now designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), are “invading the U.S.” One particular group, Venezuela’s notorious prison gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA) has gotten a lot of attention.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has rounded up hundreds of these violent thugs from cities across the country. And under a $6 million Trump deal with the country’s president, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has sent hundreds to a massive high security prison in El Salvador.
On March 15, the Trump administration deported 261 individuals to the formerly crime ravaged, now safe, Central American country.
As the Associated Press notes, that prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, completed in 2023 and known as CECOT, is “the crown jewel” of the Central American country’s “aggressive anti-crime strategy.”
The huge high-tech, maximum-security prison has a capacity for 40,000 inmates. The clean, brightly lit prison, built to hold members of the country’s main gangs, is part of the highly popular hardline security policy of President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”
The young, popular president, who was reelected by a landslide last year, “has become Latin America’s most popular leader for his takedown of gangs, even as he has suspended key civil liberties,” reported The New York Times.
He has also become a darling of U.S. conservatives, and members of the Trump team.
Some human rights organizations have condemned conditions in Salvadoran prisons, particularly CECOT, citing reports of abuses such as torture, inmate deaths and large-scale trials, describing it as a “black hole of human rights.”
Though the center is only partly populated, in 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights expressed concerns about overcrowding in the CECOT, citing a study that found inmates had an average 0.60 square meters (2 square feet) of space.
The Red Cross recommends 3.4 meters (over 11 square feet) per prisoner as the international standard. But others call it a model prison for high threat inmates, akin to much smaller supermax prisons in the U.S.
And despite an overreaching federal judge ordering him to stop, Trump is suggesting sending people who are attacking Tesla with gunfire and Molotov cocktails to prisons in El Salvador if they are convicted of violent crimes.
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social platform.
“Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”
The Trump administration has said it views the violence against Tesla as domestic terrorism. And as I have written, I agree. As do many legal and terrorism experts.
So does our attorney general.
“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” Pamela Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Department of Justice has already charged several of these left wing violent extremists, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences.
“We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”
We can expect more violent attacks against Tesla while Musk remains at the center of American politics as de facto head of DOGE. But the Trump team has also made it clear it will crack down hard on these domestic terrorist perpetrators, so more arrests should follow very soon.
Maybe some of these radicals can be sent for a long vacation in El Salvador.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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This is NOT the first time MASS depuration has been proposed and carried out;
In 1954 , President Eisenhower rounded up and DEPORTED approximately 2.2 MILLION Mexican individuals who had been in the United States under the Bracero Program More than 63,00 Mexican illegals chose to self deport rather than wait to be deported.
In July 1954, for instance US Officials detained 42,000 persons under the Operation Wetback program
An INS report later indicated that the agency apprehended nearly 1.1 million individuals
This is but a small excerpt of the history of IMMIGRATION and DEPORTATIONS.
Keep in mind that the above does NOT denote that deportations were initiated as a result of VIOLENCE of other adverse behavior on the par of those in the country legally. These were peaceful family persons who had entered the country to WORK – many of them under the “Bracero” Farm workers programs
What we currently have which has brought up the URGENT NEED OF deportations, is the presence of “professional” dangerous gangs, NOT from Mexico, but from Central and South American Countries., who have taken over entire cities, threatened, terrorized, raped and murdered American citizens;
Millions of those being deported or attempted to be, such as the DANGEROUS Tren de Aragua Gang members were purposely RELEASE from prisons or insane asylums and sent to United States when Biden proclaimed the country to have OPEN BORDERS, so that those countries no longer had to support them
Then, of course, there is the issue of the presence of DANGEROUS DRUG CARTELS
I bet with the power they had in the United States, Tren De Aragua NEVER envisioned they would end up in that situation, as they basically had full reign in he USA