MSNBC's Joe Scarborough warned that president Donald Trump's deportation flights sending immigrants to a notorious El Salvador prison would undermine the administration's stated goal of getting them to self-deport.
The president and his top officials are ignoring court orders and refusing to bring back a Maryland man mistakenly sent to the maximum security prison, but the "Morning Joe" host said the administration would not be able to lawfully conduct the mass deportations Trump promised on the campaign trail.
"We could actually take clips over the last three months and we could just, without saying I told you so, but we've done it," Scarborough said. "We've done it already on the economy, we've done it already on the markets, we could also do it on immigration. We said consistently around the table you were not going to have enough money, you're not going to have enough manpower, you're not going to have enough judges. You're not going to have the ability to reach significant numbers in deportations, right, so self-deporting actually makes the most sense for the Trump administration."
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"But the message that they've put out there to stop other immigrants from coming in, illegal immigrants from coming in, obviously, and I think it's probably, it's a frightening message that will probably do just that," Scarborough added. "But it also is having a reverse effect. It's stopping illegal immigrants in America that are ready to go home, that don't want to stay in the United States, that get the message and are ready to leave."
Undocumented migrants won't be as willing to turn themselves in to law enforcement if they're afraid of getting swept into a torture prison in another country, Scarborough said.
"It's got them afraid to go home, it's got them afraid to go to an ICE office, it's got them afraid to go to their local sheriff or their local police officer and say, 'Hey, I'm not here legally, I want to go home – how do I do it?' Well, the Trump administration has the responsibility, if they want that to happen, they're going to have to show that there is a pathway for people that are here illegally to go home and not end up in a prison in El Salvador," Scarborough said. "That's on them right now, and if they can do that, they will, I think, they will actually see their numbers go up significantly. But they've got to make sure that you don't have what the incident that you were talking about, where somebody goes and reports themselves and then ends up again in terrible situation."
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