The Power of the Bluff: Trump’s Real Goal in El Slavador Isn’t Deportation of US Convicts, It’s Fear

Frank Report published El Salvador Offers to Host US Prisoners at Discount Rates.

The story was about El Salvador’s dictator, Nayib Bukele’s proposal to house U.S. prisoners in his Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), for a fee high enough to make El Salvador’s prison system sustainable while remaining substantially cheaper than what U.S. taxpayers pay for incarceration at home.

The offer, hailed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “unprecedented,” has drawn interest from President Trump, who declared he would implement the plan “in a heartbeat” if legally feasible.

CECOT, a maximum security prison designed for 40,000 inmates, offers triple-stacked steel bunks, meals eaten by hand, and communal holes for toilets. Prisoners remain in their windowless, 100-man cells with no running water, for 23.5 hours daily, without phone calls or visitors. Deaths occur quietly, with unmarked graves ensuring families remain undisturbed.

The U.S. currently pays around $40,000 per year per inmate. If Bukele will do it for $20,000 per head, he walks away with hundreds of millions in new revenue. If the U.S. outsourced 100,000 prisoners, the potential savings for US taxpayers could reach $5 billion annually.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed Bukele’s proposal as an “unprecedented act of generosity and unrivaled friendship.”

Is it legally feasible? The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect against deprivation of liberty without due process, and Supreme Court rulings prohibit involuntary exile or forced expatriation.

A Slippery Slope: Who’s Next?

If the legal issue can be circumvented, the government could expand the concept to:

1. The Homeless 
2. The Insane 
3. The Chronically Ill 
4. The Extremely Elderly 
5. The Politically Problematic 
6. The Wildly Unpopular
7. MSNBC Anchors

Now comes Bangkok, the geopolitical savant, calling the whole thing a feint—an elaborate game of 4D chess. I personally take anything Bangkok says as serious. I loved Bangkok’s idea of private prisons in Montana, where prisoners make MAGA hats and “God, Guns, and Trump” t-shirts.

Guest View

By Bangkok

I think most people — including your own staff — are missing what’s really happening here.

While I agree that it’s probably not ‘legal’ to deport US citizens to prisons in El Salvador, I think you may be missing Trump’s true endgame (goal) here.

Trump isn’t likely to send anybody there — as he knows this policy would likely be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Instead, the mere threat of ‘considering’ this type of plan (for the future) is already causing even more anxiety within the illegal alien community — as it provides one more ‘terrifying’ reason not to illegally cross our borders for the purpose of committing violent crimes.

The fact that Secretary Rubio took the time to negotiate the details (with the president of El Salvador) only elevates the anxiety, as it makes the threat of this policy more ‘real’.

Illegal crossings have already decreased massively since Trump took office and began his raids. That’s because people are scared shitless of workplace raids (and terrified of being sent to a US base in GITMO too).

Many illegal migrants are also choosing to self-deport themselves because of this massive anxiety (due to Trump’s policies).

So… The extra ‘possibility’ of being sent to a terrifying prison in El Salvador (in the future) is gonna cause even more anxiety, which is exactly what Trump’s border security team wants.

This extra ‘anxiety’ will likely cause even MORE people to voluntarily self-deport themselves.

Keep Supreme Court Out: Why Trump Wins by Not Acting

Here’s the interesting part…

If Trump never actually attempts to send anybody to a prison in El Salvador, the US Supreme Court can never rule that it’s illegal — which would keep the fear alive among the community of deportable people, as they’d continue to shit their pants with fear, indefinitely.

If Trump attempted to send a single person there — he knows that the Supreme Court would probably rule that it’s illegal (unless the migrants were Salvadoran citizens) and the ‘fear factor’ of having this policy would be lost.

That’s my take on this.   Yeah, I could be wrong and Trump may attempt to send illegal migrants there soon.  But that would not be a logical choice, IMO.

Trump is winning by merely ‘considering’ this option.

He should continue to merely ‘consider’ it — indefinitely.

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