We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
PRESIDENT TRUMP, THE PRISONER’S FRIEND
I get appreciative mail from admirers of my blog all the time. This one from a grateful prisoner came in last week. (Note: Whatever else my correspondent might be serving time for, it probably isn’t for being an English teacher):
I am rally getting sick of you woke shit.Trump trump Please tell me why you did not E-Mail us abought Biden pardoned Adam Shift who made up a Russian Coulson and played that shit on the hole country for 4 years. Your Nothing but a Dim Hack stop tooting waters and stick legal cases.
Today’s post probably will not raise this “Dim Hack[‘s]” stock with my grateful reader much, because I am failing to mention Joe Biden at all while I am “tooting waters” (whatever that means).
But the evidence is the evidence: Mr. Federal Prisoner, Donald Trump is not your friend.
You might think that President Trump would have a little more appreciation for how easy it is to become a felon in this country after his bumpy ride over the past four years. After all, he himself is still a felon – with 34 counts from which he cannot pardon himself – in New York State.
Trump claims he was wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. The appeals process is not over, so he may be right. Surely, a lot of people in federal prison feel the same way about their convictions, and you’d think the Prez might feel a little kinship with them.
But President Trump, it seems, has learned little from his four years in the criminal law desert. While he has no problem pardoning his sycophants and fellow travelers who racked up felonies while trashing the Capitol and assaulting cops in his name, he appears to remain contemptuous of people whose crimes of conviction may not have been committed in service to his glory.
Trump told reporters last Sunday that he would “love” to send federal inmates to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, but he first has to check with his legal people on whether he is allowed to.
While on Air Force One while en route back to Washington from Mar-a-Lago, Trump was asked whether he plans to pursue El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s offer to house American prisoners. “Well, I love that,” Trump said. “If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars — if he would take them, I would be honored to give them.”
“I don’t know what the law says on that, but I can’t imagine the law would say anything different,” he said. “If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I’m all for it, but I would only do according to the law.”
Imprison federal prisoners for “less money than it costs us.” That doesn’t sound like a President who wants to adequately fund the BOP for infrastructure repairs, full staffing, FSA programming, and halfway houses, now, does it?
Trump has already invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, intended to detain and deport noncitizens during wartime, to expel 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they are being held in CECOT.
Bukele said in February that he had offered the United States “the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison… in exchange for a fee,” he wrote in a post on the X formerly known as Twitter.
While touring CECOT in February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Bukele’s offer to house federal prisoners, calling it “an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country.”
It would be flatly unlawful to send federal prisoners, whether citizens or not, to a foreign prison. Under 18 USC § 3621, anyone sentenced to prison for a federal crime “shall be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons until the expiration of the term imposed, or until earlier released for satisfactory behavior pursuant to the provisions of section 3624.” While noncitizens can be transferred to their home country under the treaty transfer program, 18 USC § 4107 requires that the prisoner consent to the transfer.
Newsweek, Donald Trump Says He Loves Idea of Sending Americans to El Salvador Prison (April 7, 2025)
The Hill, Trump on possibility of sending American inmates to El Salvador prison: ‘I love that’ (April 7, 2025)
USA Today, Trump on sending American prisoners to El Salvadorian prisons: ‘I love that’ (April 7, 2025)
– Thomas L. Root