Summary
Trump expressed support for sending American citizens to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, praising President Bukele’s tough-on-crime stance.
The U.S. already deported 238 Venezuelans there under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, despite federal judges calling the transfers unlawful and ordering returns.
Trump said he’d be “honored” to send repeat U.S. offenders abroad if legal. Critics, including judges and rights advocates, condemned the plan as unconstitutional and authoritarian.
Legal experts warn no U.S. law permits outsourcing American incarceration, raising serious due process and human rights concerns.
Part of the problem is the cold war propaganda was so laser focused on “communism bad” that much of why the USSR was bad was lost. The older generation still have a knee jerk reaction to the word communism that right wing media frequently exploits to generate a cheap emotional reaction by accusing any group they don’t like of being communist. Meanwhile the real horrors of the USSR are largely ignored lest people start drawing parallels with current events.
Yes, Americans have somehow come to believe that, among the things the USSR did, providing housing and education to ordinary people is bad, while disappearing people based on their political opinions to be killed or worked to death in gulags is good.