Concentration Camps and the Deportation of American Citizens

There is no limiting principle for disappearing people into the Bukele gulag.

A prison officer guards a cell at maximum security penitentiary CECOT (Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism) on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. (Alex Peña/Getty Images)

A simple legal question: Can the U.S. government send American citizens to prison in another country?

The Trump administration’s position is that:

• If it deports an individual to foreign soil,

• And this individual leaves U.S. airspace before a court order forbids it,

• Then the government has neither the ability to bring, nor an interest in bringing, the individual back to U.S. soil. Ever.

We have seen this argument deployed in pieces already.

• The deportation flight which a judge forbade, but the government then claimed the plane was over international waters so it could not legally be recalled.

• The shipping of individuals to El Salvador without due process.

• The refusal to repatriate an individual whom the government admits it deported in error.

If these precepts are allowed to stand—and so far, they have been—what would stop the government from apprehending a U.S. citizen, putting the American on a plane to El Salvador, and handing him to that country’s government with the expectation of indefinite imprisonment?

It is true that an American citizen cannot be jailed on American soil without due process. But couldn’t he be jailed on foreign soil without due process?

Couldn’t the government just . . . do it? Certainly if some namby-pamby, woke, DEI lawyer filed a writ of habeas a court might say, “This is very bad. You, government attorneys, cannot do that.”

To which the government would respond, “Maybe we ‘can’t.’ But we did. And there is no longer a remedy for this action. We have no jurisdiction over the El Salvadoran government. Moreover, no one in America has standing to contest our actions. Where’s the defendant? I don’t see any defendant here. Do you see a defendant, your Honor?”

I know what you’re thinking: That’s not possible. The U.S. government cannot snatch a citizen off the street, take him to an airport, and rendition him to a gulag in El Salvador without recourse.

Let me explain to you why Trump could do exactly that.