This not entertainment. This is real life. Over the past several weeks, President Donald Trump has begun testing the outer limits of executive power in ways that should deeply unsettle every American, regardless of party, ideology, or background. What began as rhetoric on the campaign trail has now entered the realm of serious policy consideration, and with it comes a profound threat to the rights and constitutional protections of U.S. citizens.
At the center of this emerging crisis is a statement Trump made last week, suggesting that American citizens convicted of violent crimes could be deported to foreign prisons, specifically, the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. “Why should American taxpayers have to pay to house these monsters,” Trump said during a rally in Tampa. “El Salvador knows how to deal with them.”
These remarks are not just irresponsible. They represent a fundamental break from constitutional law, international human rights standards, and the very idea of what it means to be an American citizen.
The deportation of U.S. citizens is not legally possible under current law. The Supreme Court ruled decisively in Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) that the government cannot revoke citizenship without the individual’s voluntary consent. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black said, “In our country the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship.” This remains binding precedent. Citizenship is not a license, it’s a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. To forcibly remove a citizen to another country, let alone one known for gross human rights abuses, would be a plain violation of that right.
Yet this proposal is not being summarily dismissed by the administration. When Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked directly whether the deportation of U.S. citizens was being seriously considered, she replied, “We’re exploring every legal avenue to protect the American people.” This is not a denial. This is the language of a government searching for legal cover to violate constitutional norms.
The proposed destination, CECOT, is a prison that human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned. Human Rights Watch has warned that the facility is “a symbol of unchecked executive power and mass arbitrary detention.” Amnesty International has called it “a place of systematic rights violations,” documenting widespread reports of torture, overcrowding, and indefinite detention without trial. Inmates have been photographed kneeling shoulder to shoulder, heads shaved, hands zip-tied behind their backs, confined in concrete cells without sunlight or medical care.
And this is where the President of the United States has proposed sending American citizens.
This authoritarian drift does not exist in isolation. It follows the administration’s open defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Abrego Garcia v. United States, which reaffirmed the right of lawful permanent residents to due process before deportation. The Court issued a stay on deportations pending further review. The Trump administration ignored it. Deportation flights continued. Pressed on the matter, Trump claimed the Court was “playing games,” and that he had “a duty to act.”
In a statement following the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union warned: “What we are witnessing is not merely a difference in interpretation. It is a fundamental breach of constitutional order. The executive is not above the courts.” Laurence Tribe, the Harvard constitutional law professor, put it more bluntly: “This administration’s deportation rhetoric is a direct assault on the Fourteenth Amendment. We haven’t seen a challenge to birthright citizenship and due process this brazen in over half a century.”
Taken together, these developments reflect a pattern that is no longer subtle. The President is asserting powers he does not have, ignoring judicial constraints, and suggesting punishments that no American court would dare impose. The implication is chilling: rights are no longer guaranteed by law, but negotiable based on political will.
The stakes are enormous. The power to arrest, exile, and imprison is the most dangerous authority any government can wield. In a free society, these powers are subject to strict legal limitations, and always contingent on due process and judicial review. What the Trump administration appears to be testing is whether it can act unilaterally, without courts, without consent, and without consequence.
We cannot allow that experiment to succeed.
The idea that some citizens can be treated as stateless, disappeared into a foreign penal system, violates not only U.S. law, but international treaties to which the United States is a signatory. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. ratified in 1992, prohibits arbitrary detention and guarantees the right to be tried within one’s own legal system. Deporting citizens to a country that does not share our judicial standards, where torture is routine and legal oversight is minimal, would directly breach these obligations.
Supporters of this policy may argue that extreme crimes warrant extreme measures. But the moment we justify the erosion of constitutional protections based on the moral judgment of who deserves them, we are no longer operating under a rule of law. We are operating under rule by fiat.
And if a president can designate one class of citizens for exile today, he can expand that class tomorrow.
We’ve already seen the consequences of legal erosion in the deportation of lawful residents, many with decades-long ties to the United States, without hearings, counsel, or review. Now, with citizens in the administration’s crosshairs, the barrier between what is merely alarming and what is genuinely unconstitutional is collapsing.
This is a pivotal moment. Constitution has collapsed. The Supreme Court has ruled. The Constitution is clear. The international community has warned us. Now the responsibility falls to the people, through Congress, through the courts, and through every institution that still functions, to say unequivocally: this cannot and will not happen here.
To remain silent is to grant permission. And what begins with the vulnerable always spreads to the rest.
If we believe in the rule of law, in the sanctity of citizenship, and in the limits of presidential power, then we must treat this not as another outrage in a news cycle, but as the defining test of whether we still want a constitutional republic, or whether we have begun to accept the machinery of autocracy in exchange for the illusion of order.
The door is still open to stop this. But it won’t remain open long.
Disclaimer: I welcome your cmments. Jim Powers writes opinion columns. The views expressed in this editorial are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Polk County Publishing or its affiliates. In the interest of transparency, I am politically Left Libertarian.
