Transported Beyond Seas
“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences…”
When the Founders wrote that line in the Declaration of Independence, they weren’t being poetic—they were making a legal and moral accusation. Under British rule, colonists were sometimes seized and shipped across the Atlantic to face trial in England, in courts that did not recognize their rights, and among juries that did not understand their communities.
These weren’t trials; they were warnings. They were reminders that power, unaccountable, does not care for borders or justice. And they were one of the reasons Americans chose revolution.
Today, that same logic is whispering its way back into American politics.
In a recent conversation with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, Donald Trump suggested that “homegrown criminals”—that is, American citizens—should be sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison. He praised the images of shackled prisoners packed into cells and told Bukele he’d need “about five more places.”
No U.S. citizens have been sent there—yet. But immigrants have.
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a work-authorized immigrant who lived in Maryland, worked full-time as a union sheet metal apprentice, and had a permit issued by the Department of Homeland Security, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and thrown into CECOT. The government admitted it was an administrative error—but then refused to bring him back, arguing that once he was outside U.S. borders, he was beyond the court’s jurisdiction.
Later, they accused him of being MS-13 to justify leaving him in a foreign prison, despite no trial and a court order saying he should be returned.
This is how it starts.
First, an “administrative error.”
Then, a legal technicality.
Then, an accusation—untested, unproven, and politically convenient.
And soon, a precedent: that if the government decides you are undesirable, it can simply remove you—across borders, beyond protections, and outside the Constitution.
The Founders saw it coming. They called it tyranny.
We should too.