President Donald Trump suggested Monday that the United States could pay a “small fee” to foreign countries to imprison Americans who are repeat criminal offenders, floating a kind of modern-day penal colony.
Trump billed the idea as a cost-saving measure in remarks at a conference for House Republicans in Miami.
“If they’ve been arrested many, many times, they’re repeat offenders by many numbers, I want them out of our country,” he said. “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."
Trump said doing so would allow the federal government to avoid using U.S. jails "for massive amounts of money" and private prisons, which he said “charge us a fortune.”
He presented the idea as separate from efforts that are underway now to deport migrants living in the United States illegally who are said to have criminal records. Trump acknowledged that he would need to get such a plan "approved."
In the early 18th century, Britain sent convicts to the American colonies, a trade that ended with the start of the American Revolution. Britain soon began searching for an alternative zone of forced exile and landed on Australia.
The Trump administration is aggressively pushing to cut the federal budget. His newly created “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by tech tycoon Elon Musk, has already boasted of saving more than $560 million in government spending by slashing programs, contracts and leases.
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Trump's comments come in the midst of high-profile efforts to repatriate migrants who have entered the country illegally.
Since he took office one week ago, Trump has ramped up deportation efforts, and over the weekend, he strong-armed the Colombian government to accept planes of deportees or face potentially devastating trade sanctions.
“We have no apologies, and we’re moving forward very fast,” Trump said. “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.”
It is not known what inspired Trump's foray into temporarily exiling U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, but he argued that violent offenders are in some cases free to re-offend after having "been arrested 30 times, 35 times, 41, 42 times."
He described "heinous charges," such as pushing people into oncoming subway trains, hitting people in the head with baseball bats and "punching old ladies in the face, knocking them unconscious and stealing their purse."
Trump said he believed crime would dry up if the United States shipped criminal offenders out of the country to live elsewhere “for a while.” And he said other countries were doing it already.
"Let them be brought out of our country and let them live there for a while," Trump said. "Let’s see how they like it."
