Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly that the Trump administration’s decision to put an anti-immigrant leader in a top position within the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is “offensive, insensitive and malicious.” As ombudsman, Julie Kirchner, the former executive director of a Southern Poverty Law Center designated anti-immigrant hate group, would be tasked with assisting immigrants encountering problems within USCIS. This is supposed to be a non-political role, but as one immigrant rights leader previously noted, Kirchner’s appointment is “putting the fox in charge of the hen house.” Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus:
“Given that Ms. Kirchner has made a career of attacking immigrant communities, we find her appointment to be offensive, insensitive and malicious. We do not believe that a person who has spent over a decade attacking immigrant communities will now work effectively and thoughtfully to advance the rights of immigrants and fulfill the important duties that are required of this role.”
A DHS spokesperson said the claims from the letter—which was signed by Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham and 18 other House Democrats—were “unfounded.” The problem with that DHS statement, however, is that the facts about Kircher and her former hate group FAIR say otherwise:
FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton and received significant financial backing for many years from an organization called the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund, which is still around, finances “research” into white genetic superiority; Tanton is a crank Michigan doctor who is infamous for having written in 1986 that “whites” should not go “quietly into the night” as their control over society declines. Tanton remains on FAIR's board of advisers, while its current president is a man named Dan Stein who has complained that the U.S.’s immigration policy is a plot to undermine “Anglo-Saxon dominance” and who once defended the practices of infanticide, forced abortion, and government-imposed selective breeding in a Wall Street Journal interview with Tucker Carlson. In 2004, Stein represented FAIR at the American Renaissance conference—a biannual gathering of white-power KKK types at which fellow speakers discussed themes such as “white revolt,” “unqualified blacks in positions of authority,” “homosexual and Jewish activism,” and the possibility that “Oriental immigrants are forming a fifth column in Canada.”
Kircher herself, as FAIR’s former director, was offended by the images of brown faces participating in historic, pro-immigrant marches in 2006 that emerged following the House passage of notorious, anti-immigrant legislation that according to immigrant rights group America’s Voice “would have turned undocumented workers and anyone who helped them—including their priests and pastors— into felons”:
In 2006, she wrote a piece for FAIR’s newsletter lamenting the large pro-immigration marches that took place in March of that year, writing, “The sight of millions of illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizen children marching under Mexican flags and asserting their identities as something other than American is very troubling and should be seen as a wake-up call to the political leadership of this country. The United States could well face a situation similar to what has been taking place in France and other parts of Europe, where the children of the last generation of immigrants not only do not identify with the societies in which they live, but are openly hostile to them.”
Yup, that’s the same person that’s supposed to help immigrants who want to become permanent U.S. residents and citizens with paperwork problems and other issues at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Dreamers—the same ones that Trump is harassing and arresting for deportation despite his claims that he’s not—also go through USCIS for DACA consideration. No wonder members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—as well as countless immigrants and advocates around the country—are furious, and are speaking out.