Trump Wants To Send Tesla Vandals To Prison In El Salvador

People across the country and around the world are expressing their displeasure with Elon Musk and Tesla, whether with their wallets or with their incendiaries. The latter has gotten popular in Europe as well as here in the States, with some Tesla protesters allegedly torching cars to get back at the eugenicist transphobe cutting government workers and services. Musk's friend President Donald Trump has already promised to treat any alleged Tesla vandals as domestic terrorists, but expanded on what that might actually mean in a Truth Social post Friday: Trump wants to send the "sick terrorist thugs" to prisons in El Salvador. 

So far, three individuals have been charged in connection with destruction of Tesla property: One in Oregon, one in Colorado, and one in South Carolina. Each is accused of using Molotov cocktails to torch Tesla cars, Superchargers, or stores, but no mention has yet been made of any suspect having entered the United States without documentation in order to do so. Still, Trump is interested in sending the three to the Salvadoran prison that has recently served as the administration's dumping ground for migrants: CECOT, a megaprison built to house terrorists. 

Trump followed the El Salvador post with another on Truth Social, simply saying "WE WANT VIOLENT CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!" The two posts, taken together, seem to imply that citizenship no longer matters for little things like due process. The evolution of the administration's plan here has been steady: First undocumented migrants with criminal records were to be deported, then all undocumented migrants, then the "deportations" became flights to the Salvadoran prison. Then "repeat offenders" were lumped in, legal immigrants were added, and now the possibility of foreign detention has been expanded to U.S.-born citizens. Fans of frog soup might recognize the recipe here. 

Regardless of your thoughts on Tesla, arson, or Tesla arson, the threat of decades of detention in a foreign nation — in a prison decried for its conditions by Human Rights Watch no less — should raise alarm bells. Criminality isn't some immutable truth about a person's character, something they're either born with or without, but an ever-shifting definition decided by those in power. First they came for the immigrants, then the repeat offenders, then the Molotov makers. Who will end up in El Salvador next?