In this NBC News report, Fordham Law Professor Jennifer Gordon anticipates significant legal pushback against Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s offer to jail U.S. citizens in El Salvador.
Three legal and immigration experts who spoke with NBC News raised questions about the legality of such actions and anticipated significant legal pushback on any effort to deport incarcerated U.S. nationals to another country.
“The U.S. can’t deport one of its own citizens. Deportation is for noncitizens only,” said Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham Law School.
“But that’s not the end of the story. There’s a second set of questions about whether the U.S. could transfer a U.S. citizen prisoner to another country to serve their sentence,” she said.
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Fordham’s Gordon said, “Can the U.S. deport Salvadorans convicted of crimes to El Salvador? Yes. Can El Salvador keep those people in its own prisons? Yes. But as to U.S. citizens, it’s not an immigration question. It’s a prison policy question.”
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Gordon said she would anticipate constitutional and due process challenges if there are attempts to deport U.S. citizens.
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