'Nonsense': Legal expert shoots down Trump's 'preposterous' threat
Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams pumped the brakes on what he called a "preposterous" suggestion repeatedly made by President Donald Trump that Williams maintained was unconstitutional and had no chance of being enforced.
At an Oval Office meeting Monday with El Salvador's president, Trump voiced his "willingness" to send American-born criminals to Salvadoran prisons, claiming, "I'm all for it."
Trump has already struck a $6 million deal with the Central American nation to imprison alleged gang members and other undocumented migrants deported from the United States. Earlier this month, Trump said that if El Salvador would take American prisoners, "I would be honored to give them."
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Williams said on CNN Tuesday, "There are issues on which reasonable minds can differ: Democrats, Republicans, different litigants. And there are some things that are truth or facts that cannot be denied. It is a fact that American law, the American Constitution, and American history, does not allow for the detention or incarceration of American citizens on foreign soil — period."
Williams continued, "The idea that the president is 'just putting it out there' and just testing it as an idea is preposterous. It's nonsense. There is just no basis for that. And to be clear, rather than just this moral, lofty stuff I'm saying here, it's grounded in the Constitution, the Eighth Amendment. We've heard about it. Maybe people don't know what it is, but it prevents cruel and unusual punishment. We can't, as Americans, send people to be incarcerated in foreign prisons that we don't know the standards of, and so on. It's not about being 'touchy feely' to criminals and being soft — this is what the law says. It does not allow it. There's no basis for what the president said yesterday."
CNN anchor Christi Paul suggested that the Trump administration may be seeing "just how far they can push...when it comes to the law."
"And is it just a joke and just floating an idea?" Williams asked. "Well, it's an idea that's not based in reality, and I'm glad we can talk about it and make clear that, again, this isn't a question of Elliott's opinion. This is established, and any law professor analyst, attorney, worth ...their salt is in agreement on this issue. This is just not up for debate."