Following U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele on April 14, 2025, claims (archived) circulated online that Trump had told Bukele to build "five more" prisons for "homegrown" criminals — meaning criminals holding U.S. citizenships.
A popular X video, viewed more than 8 million times at the time of this writing, was captioned:
Trump to Bukele: "Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), X (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived).
It's true Trump told Bukele he should build "about five more places," referring to El Salvadoran prisons, for "homegrown criminals." Trump made the remark before sitting down for a formal meeting with Bukele at the White House. The remark was caught on the government of El Salvador's livestream (archived) of Bukele's visit. Trump also used the term "homegrown criminal" at least twice (archived) during the official part of the meeting in front of the press pool. Therefore, we rate the claim true.
Trump repeated "homegrown" remark to White House press pool
Trump first made the remark about "five more places" while showing Bukele around the White House. It was unclear who was in the room with Trump and Bukele but the pair were not alone. After Trump made that first remark about "homegrowns" to Bukele, he turned around and repeated it louder, with people heard laughing in response.
Trump said (time stamp 05:24):
Trump: I want to do it for homegrown criminals next. I said: "homegrowns are next." The homegrowns. You've gotta build about five more places.
Bukele: Yeah, we've got space.
Trump: Alright. (unintelligible) It's not big enough.
Trump subsequently repeated the term "homegrown" in reference to criminals at least twice during the formal sit-down part of his meeting with Bukele.
Trump said (time stamp 59:21):
I'd like to go a step further, I mean, I say, I said it to Pam: "I don't know what the laws are," we always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking, that are absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you'd have to be looking at the laws on that, Steve.
Later, responding to a question about whether he would send criminals who were U.S. citizens to El Salvador, Trump said (time stamp 1:12:05):
If it's a homegrown criminal I have no problem, now, we're studying the laws right now, Pam is studying, if we can do that that's good. And I'm talking about violent people, I'm talking about really bad people, really bad people. Every bit as bad as the ones coming in.
Trump again repeated that he would "love" to send "homegrown" criminals to El Salvador during an interview with Fox Noticias, due to air on April 15.
Uncertainty remained over legality of Trump's 'homegrown' criminals plan
Despite Trump's clear ambition to send criminals, including those with U.S. citizenships, to El Salvador, and El Salvador's apparent openness to receiving them, serious questions remained around whether the president's proposal was legal.
Law professors and immigration experts speaking to NBC called Trump's idea of sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador "illegal" and "unconstitutional."
David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, told NBC: "U.S. citizens may not be deported to imprisonment abroad. There is no authority for that in any U.S. law."
Stripping people of their U.S. citizenship is something that is only possible in very few cases but, under current law, would have to happen to any U.S. citizen the Trump administration wished to deport. That's because deportation is a function of immigration law, something that only noncitizens are subject to.
Naturalized citizens, meaning people who were not born in the U.S. but successfully applied to become U.S. citizens, can be denaturalized if the U.S. government finds that the citizenship was "illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation."
Writing for the law and policy journal "Just Security," Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, pointed out multiple other ways Trump's proposal conflicted with existing U.S. laws.
For example, the U.S. Constitution affords U.S. citizens the right to a due process of law and protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Eisen argued that imprisonment in El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison would almost certainly breach Eighth Amendment rights to protection against cruel and unusual punishments.
Trump also seemed to have forgotten, when he suggested sending U.S. criminals to El Salvador, about the First Step Act, which he signed during his first term, Eisen wrote. The act said the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) must place prisoners in facilities "not more than 500 driving miles away from the prisoner's primary residence." El Salvador is generally more than 500 miles away from the mainland U.S.
When asked during an April 14, 2025, Fox News interview whether Trump's proposal to send "homegrown criminals" to El Salvador was legal, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi gave a noncommittal answer, saying (time stamp 2:59):
These are Americans who he is saying have committed the most heinous crimes in our country, and crime is going to decrease dramatically because he has given us a directive to make America safe again. These people need to be locked up as long as they can, as long as the law allows. We're not going to let them go anywhere, and if we have to build more prisons in our country, we will do it.