Matt Gaetz visited El Salvador’s mega-prison and saw people drained of hope. He then pitched it to Stephen Miller

Matt Gaetz visited the El Salvador mega-prison past summertime and pitched the thought of sending migrants determination to Donald Trump’s lawman main of unit Stephen Miller, according to a report.

Trump’s failed nominee to pb the Justice Department was invited connected a diplomatic sojourn by El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele successful July 2024, TIME reports.

Bukele made Gaetz an connection during a meal that helium would beryllium consenting to imprison migrants that Trump wanted removed from the U.S. wrong El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, known arsenic CECOT, according to the outlet. The adjacent day, Gaetz was fixed a circuit of the facility, which quality rights groups person described arsenic a “tropical gulag” rife with abuses.

“The conditions had zapped the inhabitants of immoderate volition to fight,” Gaetz told TIME. “It’s pugnacious to spot the authorities of the quality information drained of hope.”

Gaetz past pitched the thought of sending migrants to the mega-prison to migration hardliner Miller, a root told the outlet, who past presented it to Trump.

“One of the reasons I similar it is due to the fact that it would beryllium overmuch little costly than our situation system, and I deliberation it would really beryllium a greater deterrent,” Trump said successful an interrogation with TIME.

The State Department arranged the $6 cardinal woody with Bukele — the self-described “world’s coolest dictator” — successful February. It enabled the Trump medication to jailhouse hundreds of immigrants successful the state contempt U.S. instrumentality barring fiscal enactment successful the signifier of “units of overseas information forces” that look credible accusations of quality rights abuses.

A fewer days aft the woody was agreed, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan pack members to El Salvador.

Inside the Oval Office alongside Bukele connected April 14, Trump said “homegrowns” should beryllium sent the cardinal American federation next.

The prison, which tin location up to 40,000 inmates, successful caller weeks began holding hundreds of immigrants. The contented garnered wide media sum aft a Salvadoran migrant surviving successful Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported to the brutal situation successful his location state contempt an migration judge’s 2019 bid preventing removal from the United States for humanitarian reasons.

The Trump medication assertion helium was a subordinate of trans-national thoroughfare pack MS-13 — a complaint Abrego Garcia and his woman person vehemently denied.

Government lawyers admitted successful tribunal documents that Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador owed to an “administrative error.”

On April 10, a unanimous Supreme Court wrote that “the United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was taxable to a withholding bid forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was truthful illegal.”

Abrego Garcia was moved to Centro Industrial situation successful Santa Ana aft outcry and his inactive warring for his time successful court.

When TIME’s elder governmental analogous Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs pressed Trump connected if helium truly wanted determination to beryllium “gulags” for American citizens overseas, the president snapped.

“Look, I spot wherever you’re coming from, from the infinitesimal this interrogation started, and it's fine, I don't mind,” Trump said, according to TIME’s transcript of the sit-down. “I've answered each question that tin beryllium answered by mankind oregon womankind, and I spot wherever you're coming from. Rapid fire. You can't adjacent hold for maine to springiness you the answer.”