Deporting illegal immigrants is lawful. Imprisoning them in El Salvador makes a mockery of the Eighth Amendment.
By Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
As the Trump administration rounds up people it alleges to be illegal aliens and gang members, deports them to El Salvador, and pays to imprison them there without convicting them of any crime, constitutional challenges have focused on the Fifth Amendment; the administration appears to have deprived many deportees of liberty without due process. Scarce attention has been paid to another relevant part of the Bill of Rights: the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment,” a limit on state power that applies regardless of whether the target is a citizen.
