Trump floats imprisonment abroad for US criminals who are 'repeat offenders'
The president pitched the idea as a cost-saving measure, arguing that sending U.S. criminals overseas for a “small fee” would cost less than domestic imprisonment.
President Donald Trump suggested Monday that the United States could pay a “small fee” to foreign countries to imprison Americans who are repeat criminal offenders, floating a kind of modern-day penal colony.
Trump billed the idea as a cost-saving measure in remarks at a conference for House Republicans in Miami.
“If they’ve been arrested many, many times, they’re repeat offenders by many numbers, I want them out of our country,” he said. “We’re going to get approval, hopefully, to get them the hell out of our country, along with others — let them be brought to a foreign land and maintained by others for a very small fee."
Trump said doing so would allow the federal government to avoid using U.S. jails "for massive amounts of money" and private prisons, which he said “charge us a fortune.”
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