Rubio touts Bukele's offer to jail U.S. citizens in El Salvador — but it's mostly illegal

Current laws “would categorically preclude most U.S. citizens and residents from serving their sentence in El Salvador,” a former U.S. attorney said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to criticism Tuesday after he announced that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, as well as violent U.S. citizens currently serving time in American prisons.

"That’s an offer President Bukele made. Obviously, we’ll have to study it on our end," Rubio said Tuesday afternoon while speaking to reporters in Costa Rica, the third stop of his first foreign trip as secretary of state. "There are obviously legalities involved. We have a Constitution, we have all sorts of things, but it’s a very generous offer."

The administration of President Donald Trump has not yet made a decision on the offer, Rubio said.

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.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/el-salvador-jail-us-nayib-bukele-marco-rubio-rcna190574

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