In an ominous episode that is still being treated as "Trump being Trump" by some portion of the corporate media, Downmarket Mussolini has once again floated the idea of transferring American citizens to a slave labor torture prison in El Salvador:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-el-salvador

Trump Backs 'Blatantly Unconstitutional' Proposal to Send US Citizen Inmates to El Salvador Prisons

"With a deadline looming for the Trump administration to return a Maryland resident to the U.S. after expelling him along with hundreds of other people to an El Salvador detention center under a shadowy deal with the Central American country, U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday stunned observers by expressing a desire to send U.S. citizens into El Salvador's prison system.

In a press briefing aboard Air Force One Sunday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter about an offer made by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept prisoners sent by the U.S. from its federal prison population.

"I love that," Trump said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."

"I don't know what the law says on that," he added. "I have suggested that, why should we stop at people who cross the border illegally?"

I know I'm not the only person working in this space that's getting sick of hanging on Der Führer's ever word, musing, and threat, but as we've discussed many times, part of the way this regime operates is by transforming Trump's ravings into presumed consent to act on its worst fascist impulses and plans, in a system of "enforced unreality." When the president says, multiple times, he wants to send US citizens to a gulag in El Salvador, he's being dead serious about the regime's intentions; whether that's legal, or anyone in a position to stop him will do so, is another matter entirely - but this guy isn't just talking to hear himself talk, no matter how hard that may be to believe for people who know how profoundly ignorant and unstable Trump actually is. Given that reality then, the regime's continued quest to manufacture consent for rendering US citizens to a foreign maximum security torture prison, brings up 4 important issues:

1) We literally have no idea what Trump's deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele says, and the arrangement is extra-judicial at best.

"As Trump expressed interest in expelling U.S. citizens to a foreign prison system, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out that the details of the White House's deal with Bukele have not been publicly disclosed.

"We literally know nothing about it, other than we're paying them $6 million," said Reichlin-Melnick. "No law in the United States authorizes us to pay another country to imprison people. And yet! They're doing it."

2) At the same time Der Führer is advocating for the wonders of rendering US citizens to the carceral "care" of an authoritarian foreign government aligned with the Trump regime, the US government is also arguing in court that once they send someone to CECOT, they no longer have the ability to bring them back because they don't have custody of the prisoner and El Salvador is outside of US jurisdiction. Taken together then, this means that the President of the United States is currently advocating for the wisdom of, and his right to, permanently disappear US citizens. I don't care how much of a trav-sham-mockery you think Trump is, that's arguably the most terrifying news to emerge from the entire Trump 2.0 era.

3) While Trump's current rhetoric is focused on "dangerous criminals" and the examples he gives are mostly made up violent crime stories, the reality is that this regime has been arguing that folks protesting its fascist agenda, boycotting Elon Musk, or acting to oppose a US-backed genocide by Israel in Gaza, are literally domestic terrorists and an active threat to US national security. Furthermore it requires no conjecture to connect these facts to the regime's gulag fantasies because the Attorney General has already indicated support for sending "domestic terrorist" anti-Tesla protestors to CECOT. If they want to disappear you into a gulag for depressing Elon's profit margins, you can bet they're fine with doing so for protesting a genocide, or even just opposing Trumpism in the streets.

4) While all of this sounds horrifying and impossible, the reality is that our anti-terrorism policies under the Bush administration after 9/11 have already established a precedent for the US govt shipping people to legal black holes and claiming they hold no responsibility for protecting their rights as part of the extraordinary rendition policy. As many warned at the time, the War on Terror was always destined to return home, and it seems that under Trump, it has done precisely that.

Like many folks who study how fascist governments operate, I've been quick to warn people that given the blatantly illegal methods by which the Trump regime has targeted migrants, foreign visitors to the United States, and student anti-genocide protestors legally in the country, it was only a matter of time before Downmarket Mussolini tried to expand those tactics to target dissidents born in the United States. After watching the US Attorney General call Tesla vandalism "domestic terrorism" yesterday, and reading Trump's unhinged social media rants about shipping folks caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships to El Salvador, I think it's safe to say we're already here.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-tesla-el-salvador

'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador

"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"

Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"

Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.

"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."

Well folks, smoke 'em if you got 'em because I'm pretty sure this bloviating nazi windbag is serious. Given the pattern we've been observing by which Trump's musing are treated as "objective" reality by his fascist minions, and how the regime then transforms that (un)reality into enforcement action regardless of the law, I don't think it's a good idea to wave this off as 'Trump being Trump." Just yesterday regime Attorney General Pam Bondi was publicly making the argument that what is, legally speaking, mere vandalism, is actually a "wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties," and that line was then parroted by a variety of regime-loyal mouthpieces in the larger discourse. This process of laying the ground work to transform fascist unreality into a presumed mandate to act is precisely the tactic we saw the Trump regime employ to justify kidnapping student anti-genocide protest leaders residing legally in the United States, render over 200 prisoners to a slave labor dungeon in El Salvador without due process, attempting to either seize control of, or destroy Columbia University, manufacture consent to annex Canada, and even attempt to shutter the US Department of Education. Furthermore, given the regime's continued insistence that invoking the word "terrorism" is a magic spell that allows them to ignore US law and our constitutionally-protected rights, you'd have to be some kind of rube to assume Bondi's media performance yesterday, and Trump's late night social media rant, aren't a coordinated effort to manufacture consent to escalate the regime's war on resistance to include American protestors and dissidents opposing the administration's fascist fuckery.

Of course it almost goes without saying that what Trump is proposing here, the rendition of American citizens to a slave labor prison in El Salvador for the high crime of vandalizing some cars, is highly illegal and a blatant violation of our legally-enshrined civil rights, but that hasn't really stopped the Trump administration from plowing ahead with its war on protest and resistance so far. Furthermore, decades and decades of bipartisan demonization of "criminals" and protestors, particularly those engaging in direct action, likely ensures that many Americans aren't going to notice this fascist repression, or care very much if they do. Naturally, the Trump regime is relying on that attitude prevailing in the larger public consciousness, which is why they're employing a boiling frog strategy of going after people they say are "gang members," "terrorists," "illegals," "antisemites," "troublemakers," and "criminals," first.

As I've noted in the past, whether or not the Trump administration is *successfully* able to get away with blatant violations of the law while enacting his fascist war on our civil rights is unknowable in the present, but the pre-existing pattern of regime behavior in the Trump 2.0 era makes it pretty clear that if Trump says it, he at least means to *try* and do it; which makes all of this an ominous warning for everyone.