If the government can deport an immigrant without due process by claiming he’s a gang member, what’s stopping it from doing the same to a U.S. citizen?
That’s the question legal experts were grappling with Monday, after President Donald Trump said he was exploring whether U.S. citizens convicted of violent crimes could be deported to El Salvador.
“We also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they’re not looking, that are absolute monsters,” Trump told reporters inside the Oval Office while hosting El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. “I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country.”
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Trump offered no specifics about how his Administration would deport “homegrown” criminals, or if he was only referring to naturalized citizens who were born outside the U.S. But he said that Attorney General Pam Bondi was studying the legality of such a proposal. Deporting U.S. citizens would mark a dramatic escalation of the Trump Administration’s already aggressive approach to immigration and criminal justice, and has raised immediate legal and ethical questions from constitutional experts, who tell TIME that even suggesting the removal of U.S. citizens crosses a line long considered inviolable.
“It’s constitutionally very problematic, if not illegal,” says Amanda Frost, an immigration law expert and University of Virginia law professor. “It’s a baseline right of citizenship that you can remain in the country.”
Trump’s suggestion appears to build on a deal struck earlier this year between Washington and San Salvador that allowed for the transfer of more than 200 Venezuelan nationals—many of them asylum seekers or convicted criminals—from U.S. detention facilities to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a sprawling prison complex that has been condemned by human rights organizations for its harsh conditions.
Bukele, a populist leader with close ties to Trump, has embraced the idea of taking in foreign detainees in exchange for compensation, calling it a chance to “outsource part of [America’s] prison system.” The prison, designed to house alleged gang members under extreme surveillance, has become both a symbol of Bukele’s crackdown and a flashpoint for global human rights groups.
“We’re studying the laws right now,” Trump said of sending U.S. citizens convicted of violent crimes to El Salvadoran prisons. “If we can do that, that’s good. And I’m talking about violent people. Really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.” He also suggested that Bukele should build “five more” prisons to make room for Americans.
Legal experts say such comments risk normalizing the idea that U.S. citizenship can be revoked through executive action—an idea with little basis in law and potentially dangerous precedent. Courts may also find it cruel and unusual punishment to send Americans to prisons in El Salvador, where human rights groups say around 350 people have died since Bukele began his “war on gangs” in early 2022. Critics of the Salvadoran prison system say inmates are often held without charge, denied medical care, and subjected to overcrowded, inhumane conditions.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert and retired Cornell Law School professor, called the proposal an attempt to “sow chaos and fear even if the Administration’s actions are not legal.” He warned that forcibly transferring U.S. citizens to foreign custody could be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
“When U.S. citizens get convicted of a crime, they serve time in either a state or federal jail, and then they get released,” Yale-Loehr notes. “They’re not supposed to be deported.”
Legal scholars say there is no constitutional or statutory authority for deporting U.S.-born citizens under any circumstances. While federal law does allow for denaturalization—the revocation of citizenship—it can only be pursued in rare cases, typically involving fraud during the naturalization process. Simply committing a crime, no matter how serious, is not grounds for stripping someone of their citizenship.
Frost pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Afroyim v. Rusk, which held that the government cannot revoke someone’s citizenship without their consent. The ruling came in response to efforts to strip Americans of their citizenship during the Cold War for engaging in certain political activities, like voting in foreign elections or joining the Communist Party.
If Trump were to attempt to strip citizenship from people who were naturalized lawfully, legal experts say it would almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional. And deporting someone who retains their citizenship, whether naturalized or born in the United States, is plainly forbidden under existing law.
“You can imprison U.S. citizens, you can even execute them—but you cannot remove them from the country,” Frost said. “That’s the foundational right of citizenship.”
While the Trump Administration has not released any legal memo outlining how such deportations might work, rights advocates say even floating the idea could have a chilling effect, particularly among immigrant communities and naturalized citizens who may fear arbitrary detention or removal.
“I think people should be alarmed,” Yale-Loehr says. “I think before people were saying, ‘well, I’m not an immigrant, so I don’t have to worry.’ And now with this proposal, if he goes forward with it, we all have to worry.”
Trump’s idea has landed with a thud among Democrats on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers warned it could set a dangerous precedent for abusing presidential power. “Donald Trump is a convicted criminal—can he be deported?” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, asks TIME.
“We’re talking about millions of people who have criminal convictions,” adds Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. “A criminal conviction is not a license to destroy the rights and dignity of a person. And one would think that Donald Trump, of all people, understands that, or should understand that.”
Since returning to office, Trump has authorized a series of moves that expand scrutiny to naturalized citizens, green card holders, legal visa holders, and even U.S. citizens suspected of speech or behavior deemed threatening to national security.
Federal agents have detained pro-Palestinian protesters, arrested legal residents on suspicion of spreading “Hamas propaganda,” and turned away foreign scientists at airports for expressing views critical of Trump Administration policies. In one instance, a French scientist was denied entry to the U.S. after officials reviewed his private messages criticizing Trump’s science agenda. In another case, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney specialist and professor at Brown University, was deported despite holding a valid visa and a court order blocking her removal. Federal agents cited social media posts and funeral attendance as evidence of ties to Hezbollah.
The Administration has defended these actions as national security measures. “Those who violate these laws will be processed, detained and removed as required,” said Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
But to many legal scholars, the cumulative effect of these actions is a calculated effort to redefine who belongs—and who doesn’t—within America’s legal and political framework. Both Yale-Loehr and Frost say that Trump’s comments, taken collectively, suggest an effort to redefine citizenship as a conditional status—revocable for those deemed undesirable. “First Trump came out with an executive order trying to restrict birthright citizenship,” Yale-Loehr says, “and now, if he goes ahead and deports U.S. citizens to foreign countries, that’s another way of stripping someone of their citizenship.”
It’s a pattern, Raskin says, that reveals a broader authoritarian impulse: expanding the boundaries of presidential power by testing legal norms.
“Everybody can see where this is going,” Raskin says. “First he violates the rights of undocumented people, then he violates the rights of documented legal residents, and then he attacks the rights of citizens. So this is a sliding scale of constitutional injury, and Trump is seeing how far he can go before he’s stopped”