President Donald Trump on Monday told Republican members of the House that he would launch a plan to subject recidivist American criminals to a punishment never before used in the United States and last used in the United Kingdom nearly two centuries ago: Forced exile.
“We’re going to get approval … to get them the hell out of our country,” he vowed. “Let’s see how they like it.”
Trump last week pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes linked to the the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, including 169 who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers in a bid to overturn the election in Trump’s favor.
Trump unveiled his plan to exile Americans as he spoke to House Republicans during a dinner for them at his Doral, Florida golf resort, about his administration’s operation implementing mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
He boasted that his administration was “tracking down the illegal alien criminals” and “detaining them and we are throwing them the hell out of our country” with “no apologies.” He then pivoted to discussing the alleged relative viciousness of foreign criminals versus native-born American lawbreakers.
“I used to say these are more violent than our criminals. In fact, the best part about them is they make our criminals look quite nice, actually, by comparison,” said Trump. In fact studies have shown that undocumented immigrants break the law far less than American-born citizens.
Trump acknowledged that the U.S. also has “many violent people” who “did not necessarily come here illegally, but have been arrested 30 times, 35 times. 41, 42 times.”
They have been arrested for crimes such as “murder and other heinous charges such as pushing people into subways” or striking people with baseball bats, or “punching old ladies in the face, knocking them unconscious and stealing their purse,” he noted.
“I don’t want these violent repeat offenders in our country any more than I want illegal aliens from other countries who misbehave,” Trump said. “They’re repeat offenders by many numbers. I want them out of our country. I also will will be seeking permission to do so,” he vowed.
“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, as opposed to be maintained in our jails for massive amounts of money, including the private prison companies that charge us a fortune. Let them be brought out of our country and let them live there for a while. Let’s see how they like it,” he said.
Trump then repeated a false assertion that foreign countries have deliberately emptied prisons and “sent” criminals to the United States to reduce crimes, and suggested American crime rates would fall by implementing his proposal to exile Americans.
Trump correctly noted that “approval” to throw American convicts out of the U.S. would be needed in the form of legislation authorizing the practice.
It’s unlikely that such a plan would ever be authorized by Congress or approved by the courts. For one thing, the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.”
It was once commonplace in the UK to use “punishment by transportation” in move criminals out of the country. Beginning in the 1600s, many English criminals were transported to the colonies that would later become the United States.
After the American Revolutionary War, the British government then established a penal colony in New South Wales (now Australia). The practice ended in the second half of the 19th century.
