By David L. Snelling

Miami – Civic groups and legal experts are sounding the alarm after President Trump threatened to deport U.S. citizens who commit heinous crimes to El Salvador and other countries that would take them.

Such a law is widely deemed impossible but Trump has asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine statues to determine whether the president has the power to deport U.S. citizens including those from Caribbean nations who break the law.

Some groups said Trump is targeting Haitians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans and people born in Central America who are currently living in the U.S. lawfully.

Trump’s rhetoric came last week during a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in the Oval Office discussing ICE mistakenly deported a Maryland man to the Central American country.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. but Bukele said he wouldn’t fight for him to return on American soil.

The Trump administration deported over 200 undocumented Venezuelans to El Salvador who were members of the MS-13 street gang allegedly responsible for terrorism, assaults, robberies and rape.

He said he’s exploring deporting U.S. citizens who commit violent crimes as well.

“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,” Trump said with his meeting Bukele.

Bukele indicated he welcomes Trump’s proposal and would incarcerate violent criminals from the U.S. in his country.

“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country,” Trump said.

Trump has launched the largest illegal immigration crackdown operation in U.S. history targeting over 10 million people living unlawfully in the U.S.

So far, the operation has deported over 30,000 undocumented immigrants since he returned to power in January, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

However, federal courts temporarily halted some of Trump’s deportation decrees including ending a Biden-era parole program that allowed hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Cubans, Venezuelans migrants to work and live in the U.S. for two years.

He also attempted to roll back Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for over 500,000 migrants whose countries experienced natural disasters and political upheaval.

They were allowed to live and work in the U.S. until the condition in their home countries improved.

A federal judge spared Venezueleans from deportation and the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stymied the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelans in Texas under the Alien Enemies Act.

That leaves other migrants including Haitians with an August deadline to self deport or be forced to return to their home countries.

Some civil rights and immigration advocacy groups said Trump’s latest deportation rhetoric is an attack on Black American citizens.

They condemned such a proposal which puts Blacks on high alert and some non-criminal African Americans might mistakenly get deported similar to Garcia’s case.

“A policy that even considers targeting American citizens lays the groundwork for mass deportation campaigns that will disproportionately impact Black immigrants, including Haitians, Jamaicans, and others from the Caribbean and across the diaspora,” Jamarr Brown, executive director at Color of Change PAC. told Grio. “This is not just about immigration. It’s about the erosion of democracy, the abandonment of the rule of law, and the weaponization of government against our communities.”

“By refusing to return a Maryland man who was wrongly deported, Trump is undermining the very safety and justice he claims to champion,” Brown added.

Some groups said a law of this magnitude is unconstitutional and the courts may say Trump has gone too far.

David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., told NPR Trump’s proposal would draw a barrage of legal challenges.

“It’s obviously unconstitutional, obviously illegal. There’s no authority in any U.S. law to deport U.S. citizens and certainly not to imprison them in a foreign country,” said Bier.

“The problem of course is [Trump] already has illegally deported hundreds of people by just not giving the courts an opportunity to stop him,” Bier added. “I think that’s the real fear, now that he is going to try to evade judicial review of deportations of U.S. citizens.”

With the U.S. possibly on the brink of a recession with Trump’s escalating trade war with China, the costs to detain and deport illegal immigrants is estimated to cost America billions of dollars each year.

The U.S. is raising baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent and in retaliation, China imposed a minimum 125 percent tariff on U.S. goods and restricted exports of rare earths critical to high-tech industries.

Deporting undocumented immigrants is costing roughly $88 billion a year, according to ABC News, citing a report from the American Immigration Council.

It would cost a total of $967.9 billion or more in ten years.

The report acknowledges there are significant cost variables depending on how such an operation would be conducted and says its estimate does not take into account the loss of tax revenue from workers nor the bigger economic loss if people self-deport and American businesses lose labor.

The cost of adding U.S. citizens to Trump’s deportation plan could reach over a trillion dollars.