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QUESTION: Well, guys, joining me now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Good to have you, Marco. How’s everything?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks for having me on here.QUESTION: Well, I imagine this is a good day given the outcome of the basketball game last night.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was good to – by the way, that young guy, he’s – I think he’s the youngest coach maybe since – they were saying last night on TV since Valvano to win a national title. He’s only been there three years. They hired him from the University of San Francisco. He played, I think, six or seven years in Israel in basketball and then he came over, and he’s done a great job. And that’s a team that’s not built with a bunch of like high-number recruits, like five-star famous guys. He’s kind of pieced it together.
So it’s great. It’s great for the school.The only thing that’s crazy is you watch the videos of these kids – my son’s at the University of Florida – and these kids climbing up on the light poles and stuff like that, it’s like – I don’t know. I don’t remember that back in the day. People just won, they had a parade. Now they want to tear up the town even the night before. So that was the only downside of winning, is seeing these people risking their lives over in Gainesville.
QUESTION: Yeah, listen, kids are going to be kids. I think I’m okay with kids being kids. I think we need a little bit more of that as well. But yeah, we’ve got to be a little careful.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, I draw the line at life-threatening shows of enthusiasm. Those are the things that – luckily, my son wasn’t the guy on the lightpost. But I saw that last night, I was like, somewhere there’s a nervous mom.
QUESTION: Well, thank you again, Mr. Secretary, for taking the time. I guess to start off, it was interesting to see the Supreme Court yesterday, in my opinion, smartly lifted the restraining order against the Trump Administration as it relates to the ability to deport Tren del Aragua murderous, drug-dealing gang members to El Salvador. Can you talk about the significance of this? I know you’ve been dealing with this a lot on a daily basis. I know you were intimately involved, obviously, when they were trying to recall to make sure we couldn’t deport murderous thugs. But can you talk about that historic work coordinating with President Bukele of El Salvador to get these criminals actually off of our streets?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, a couple things. The most important thing about that court ruling is it said you have to file it, you have to go before the judge wherever those people are being held before they’re sent abroad. Because right now, what was happening is these activists were basically just finding a court – they would find – they’d forum shop. They’d find, “Where can I find a friendly federal judge that gives me the highest probability of victory in court?” So you have over 600-something District Court judges, and so you have a guy in New Jersey or a guy in New York or a guy in D.C. basically enjoining the entire country. I mean, one of these federal judges has the power to stop the entire federal government in all 50 states and every one of our territories.And so I think the most important thing the court said is, number one, if you want to fight these things, you have to fight it in the jurisdiction where they’re being sent from or being held – in this case, Texas – which clearly, for whatever reason, these lawyers, they don’t want to go to Texas to file it, right?And then the other is just the power of the federal government to conduct foreign policy.
We have a judge right now that is basically trying to order the federal government, the Executive Branch, to bring people back. In essence, they are trying to order us to go to the president of El Salvador and tell him you must now send people back to us. So we can’t live in a country – it’s just not constitutional – where judges are now conducting the foreign policy of the United States.The trip to El Salvador was one of the first trips I did.
I think it was two weeks in, maybe three weeks in, as Secretary of State. I met with Bukele. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s very pro-American, very – likes the President a lot. He’s going to be visiting here pretty soon – I think maybe next week it is when he’s going to be coming to the Oval Office. And he agreed; he said, look, I’ve built these prisons and I will house people here.
First of all, he wants his MS-13 killers that are in the United States, because they’re wanted for crimes in El Salvador too.And then he’s also willing to hold members of this dangerous Venezuelan gang, and he’s doing it at a fraction of the cost of what it would cost us here in the United States to hold them. These – this is one of the most dangerous gangs ever, Tren de Aragua, one of the most dangerous gangs you’ve ever seen. They go in, they take over entire communities, and we want them out of the country.
And Venezuela wasn’t taking them, so we had to find a place to send them, and he has the perfect place to send them. And that’s a deal we cut with him back in early February, and this was the execution of it. We’re very grateful.And since then, we sent another group over there – not as big, but you look at the roster of people, the next – I think nine or ten that we sent. You see the rap sheet on some of these people, it’s one of the worse collections of human beings I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m glad they’re no longer in the United States.