In Washington Post, Professor Chin Dismisses Idea U.S. Could Send Citizens to Foreign Prisons

Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin spoke to the Washington Post on April 10 about President Donald Trump’s comments that he would approve of sending American-born people convicted of crimes to prisons in foreign countries.

The Post reported on Trump telling reporters on Air Force One that he is “all for” sending U.S. citizens who are “horrible criminals” to prisons in El Salvador.

Chin called the idea “the equivalent of sending political opponents to the Gulag in the Soviet Union era.”

A U.S. citizen cannot be legally deported. Also, Chin said, “there are serious arguments that it is illegal” to send a U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison “in the sense of not being an authorized a punishment under law, and unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment as a cruel and unusual punishment.”

Chin is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and holder of the Edward L. Barrett Jr. Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.