Former President Donald Trump has generated controversy on Friday morning after announcing that individuals caught vandalizing Tesla automobiles or dealerships would receive a 20-year prison sentence – not in the United States, but in the infamously harsh prisons of El Salvador.
People who get caught sabotaging Teslas will have a very strong possibility of ending up in jail for a term of up to twenty years, including the financiers,”
Trump said in an overnight message. He included a ominous all-caps warning: “WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”
Trump reiterated his comments later in the day via his TruthSocial channel, writing:
I look forward to seeing the 20-year jail sentences for the terrorist thugs doing this to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they can serve them in El Salvador’s prisons, which have become so newly notorious for such great conditions!”
Opponents were quick to condemn the proposal as not only “delusional” but openly unconstitutional.
Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill raised the alarm on Trump’s statements, pointing to their deeper significance in light of recent events.
“The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to send U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this,” she warned, referring to Trump’s recent deportation of alleged gang members to the Central American nation.
This fresh escalation is amid growing unrest surrounding the swelling #TeslaTakedown movement, a nation-wide protest backlash that is being fueled by widespread outrage at Elon Musk’s seeming overreach and his embattled leadership of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created under Trump’s vision.
According to Axios, Trump has placed the full force of the federal government behind Tesla in a bid to shield the embattled automaker from public backlash, declining sales, and a nosediving share price.
At a Thursday press conference, Attorney General Pam Bondi highlighted the administration’s tough line, referencing the arrest of three individuals allegedly linked to Tesla-related vandalism.
“Let this be a warning: if you’re involved in this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will come after you and lock you up,” Bondi said.
But legal experts argue that the suggestion of locking up United States citizens in a foreign country—regardless of the crime—is more than just outrageous. It’s unlawful.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a previous prosecutor and senior director at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, called the suggestion of outsourcing punishment to El Salvador not just unprecedented, but unconstitutional.
“It is unlawful to expatriate U.S. citizens for a crime,” Eisen said, adding that to do so would be illegal banishment. “There is no contemporary precedent for sending U.S. citizens who are convicted of crimes to foreign nations for punishment.”.
Eisen concluded that even if Trump’s statements are bluffing, any serious effort to implement such a policy would directly violate U.S. law and constitutional protections.
With Trump’s rhetoric becoming more extreme, civil rights advocates say the time has passed for dismissing his proposals as spectacle. As Ifill said, “We cannot sleepwalk through this.”
