Peter Doocy questions Karoline Leavitt about whether it's legal to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador.
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00:00To follow up on immigration, deporting American citizens to Central American prisons, is
00:08it legal or do you need to change the law to do it?
00:11Well, it's another question that the President has raised.
00:14It's a legal question that the President is looking into.
00:17And he talked about this yesterday with his meeting with President Bukele in the Oval
00:21Office.
00:22He would only consider this, if legal, for Americans who are the most violent, egregious,
00:28repeat offenders of crime who nobody in this room wants living in their communities.
00:33And then there's this CHNV thing.
00:37President Biden let more than 530,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, into
00:42the U.S. with this CHNV program.
00:46He did it with a stroke of a pen.
00:49And now a judge will not let President Trump undo it with a stroke of a pen.
00:54So are you guys going to give all 530,000-plus people individual deportation hearings or are
01:02you just going to try to deport them?
01:04MS.
01:05I spoke to White House Counsel's Office about this this morning because obviously another
01:08rogue district court judge is trying to block the administration's mass deportation efforts
01:13with this latest injunction.
01:15We will fight this in the court of law and we will ensure that every individual who illegally
01:21entered our country and was really taken advantage of by the previous administration because they
01:27abused the parole system in this country to fast-track legal status, as they said, for these
01:35illegal immigrants.
01:37And they completely abused our legal system.
01:40Many of these paroled individuals were then given temporary protective status, which the
01:45intention of that TPS was only supposed to be used in times of war or storm or destruction
01:52in the home countries of these migrants.
01:54It was completely abused.
01:56These migrants came here for economic reasons and they illegally entered our country and the
02:01President is not going to tolerate that.
02:03And so we will continue to focus on deporting as many individuals as we can.