President Trump escalated his threats against people who vandalize Tesla cars, musing in a social media post on Friday that those convicted of damaging or destroying the vehicles — including U.S. citizens — could be sent to notorious prison complexes in El Salvador.
“I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”
In recent weeks, vandals in several cities have defaced or destroyed Tesla vehicles and dealerships in apparent protest of Mr. Musk’s efforts to drastically reshape the federal government and fire much of the federal work force. No serious injuries have been reported.
Last month, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador offered to imprison convicted criminals from the United States in his country’s massive prison facilities.
Then this month, the United States deported Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador. The deportation flights landed in El Salvador despite a federal judge ordering that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States. The judge has vowed to continue investigating the flights and has said the Trump administration has not been cooperative.
Human rights groups say that the crowded Salvadoran prisons are holding pens for tens of thousands of people rounded up in arrests that have ensnared innocent people. The Terrorism Confinement Center is a hulking centerpiece of the system that is big enough to hold up to 40,000 inmates, some as young as 12.
Analysts say it is unlikely that a plan to detain U.S. citizens overseas would hold up in court.
Mr. Trump, who pardoned hundreds of people convicted in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has recently become fixated on delivering outsized punishments to the Tesla vandals after a journalist told the president at an event promoting Tesla on the White House lawn that “some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists.”
“I will do that,” Mr. Trump replied. “I’ll do that. I’m going to stop them.”
No immediate action was taken, but a week later, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, made good on the promise and labeled the attacks as acts of “domestic terrorism.”
Then, on Thursday, Ms. Bondi highlighted weeks-old arrests of individuals charged in some of the arson attacks and suggested that they were tied to a larger plot by people “operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.” Earlier this week, Mr. Trump had suggested, without evidence, in a Fox interview that the vandalism was paid for “by people very highly political on the left” — echoing his claims about other protest movements like Black Lives Matter and the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.
Ms. Bondi, who developed a close relationship with Mr. Trump during her two terms as Florida’s attorney general, supported Mr. Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, including people who had been convicted of violent crimes and weapons charges. The F.B.I. described those involved in the planning and perpetration of that attack as “domestic violent extremists.”
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