Before John Kelly signed on as Chief of Staff and when he was Director of Homeland Security, he was busy creating a false narrative that undocumented immigrants were criminals and raids to round them up were justified in the interest of public safety. The Intercept:
The redacted emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by students at Vanderbilt University Law School, show that while hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country, DHS officials tried — and largely failed — to engineer a narrative that would substantiate the administration’s claims that the raids were motivated by public safety concerns. In the emails, local ICE officials are ordered to come up with “three egregious cases” of apprehended criminals to highlight to the media.
The February raids — the first in an ongoing series under this administration — led to 680 arrests nationwide, including arrests of dozens of individuals who had no criminal history. In Austin, Texas, where 51 people were arrested, the majority of those arrested had no criminal record. [...]
“As soon as you come in, your sole focus today will be compiling three egregious case write-ups,” an assistant field office director at the agency’s Austin Resident Office wrote to that team on February 12, noting that the national and San Antonio offices were growing impatient. “HQ and SNA will ping us in the afternoon for sure.”
This is the same John Kelly who expressed his disappointment to the press over “mis-reporting” of facts a few days ago, admonishing them to get better sources. He ought to know, it seems that tweaking facts to fit a pre-determined narrative comes easily.