New White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s six-month-long reign of terror at the Department of Homeland Security felt like a lifetime for America’s undocumented immigrant families. Ignore the media anointing of Kelly as some sort of “beacon of discipline” or “plainspoken disciplinarian” because of his military rank. Instead, Kelly’s DHS appointment saw him falling in line as a “yes man” and enabler of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller’s white nationalist agenda, presiding over a chaotic, “unprecedented crackdown” against undocumented immigrants. Under Kelly, immigrants who walked into once-routine ICE check-ins didn’t walk back out. Under Kelly, immigrant communities have been living under so much fear that they are no longer reporting when they’ve been the victims of violent crime. And under Kelly, the arrests of moms and dads with no criminal record surged over 150 percent compared to this time last year:
In a sweeping February memo, Kelly did away with the Obama-era policy of prioritizing the deportation of those who’d been convicted of serious crimes. On paper (if not always in practice), the Obama administration directed immigration agents to focus their energy on those who’d been convicted of serious crimes and to largely leave alone those who’d been convicted of no crimes. In February, Kelly wrote: “Unless otherwise directed, Department personnel may initiate enforcement actions against removable aliens encountered during the performance of their official duties.”
Gone are the tiers of enforcement that the Obama administration put forth. Even as Trump himself says that he wants to rid the country of the “rapists” and “murderers” among the immigrant population, Kelly has pursued a policy that targets all undocumented immigrants. Kelly’s policy effectively blurs the line between who is an “immigrant” and who is a “criminal”—despite what Trump says. On a practical level, immigration agents no longer have to think carefully about whether an undocumented immigrant they come across is a priority, because anyone who’s undocumented can go. As a result, those with no criminal records or those with the most minor of infractions are as much at risk as those with serious convictions.
“In just six months, Kelly turned DHS into a deportation machine,” declared the Nation.
The facts debunk the administration’s claims that Kelly’s DHS was prioritizing the arrests and deportation of so-called “bad hombres.” In April, Maribel Trujillo was deported by ICE, despite having four U.S. citizen children and no criminal record. Later that month, Mario Hernandez-Delacruz was deported after living in the U.S. for nearly two decades. Hernandez-Delacruz, who had no criminal record, was a small business man and filed his income taxes like clockwork every year. But that didn’t matter to Kelly’s DHS, and he was thrown out of the country in April. And earlier this month, Jesus Lara, another undocumented dad of four U.S. citizens and no criminal record, was deported to Mexico after 16 years in the U.S. This “bad hombre” worked packaging cookies at a Pepperidge Farm plant.
Kelly always had the power to exercise discretion and instruct his ICE agents to prioritize the arrests of people who actually did pose a threat to public safety, but instead Kelly played dumb, angrily lashing out at congressional critics of Trump’s mass deportation policy and becoming a complicit actor in his anti-immigrant mission to make America white again. And while Trump’s touch has served as a reverse-Midas when it comes to the rest of his failed agenda, fear thrived under Kelly’s ICE, as intended:
“If you’re in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable,” Acting Director Thomas Homan told the House Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee. “You should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”
“Most of the criminal aliens we find in the interior of the United States, they entered as a non-criminal,” Homan said. “If we wait for them to violate yet another law against a citizen of this country, then it’s too late. We shouldn’t wait for them to become a criminal.”
Or, as the Nation notes, if that didn’t work, DHS just went ahead and turned them into criminals:
Kelly also expanded the notion of a “criminal alien.” Now a “removable alien” is anyone who has been convicted of a crime, been charged with a crime, or even committed anything that might be a “chargeable criminal offense” (jaywalking, anyone?). Immigrants who committed any kind of fraud (like using a fake Social Security number) or abused any public benefit would also be a priority for deportation, alongside anyone who had an order of removal that they’d ignored. But perhaps most stunning, Kelly directed the department to pursue anyone who, “in the judgment of an immigration officer,” posed a national-security risk to the country. In other words, any and every immigrant could be targeted by an immigration official.
And for those thinking that as a military man Kelly will bring some sort of order to the White House, it’ll be short term at best, considering the former general failed to bring any order to his already out-of-control border agents, facing a lawsuit as secretary after his Customs and Border Protection agents were accused of ignoring international law by turning away asylum-seekers at the border:
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California alleges that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have used a range of tactics to deny people their right to state their fears of persecution and apply for asylum, including “misrepresentations, threats and intimidation, verbal abuse and physical force.”
In some cases, the complaint alleges, CBP officials have told people that “Donald Trump just signed new laws saying there is no asylum for anyone.” In other instances, border guards have allegedly threatened to take away the foreigners’ children unless they signed forms forgoing their asylum claims or said on camera that they had no fear of returning home.
“The only thing we have been able to discern from six months as DHS Secretary is that John Kelly may look and sound reasonable but his actions have been anything but,” said Frank Sharry of America’s Voice. “He’s a good soldier in Steve Bannon’s crusade. But an ‘adult in the room,’ who can impose order on West Wing chaos? Stand up to Trump and the Mooch? Take the President’s phone from him to stop the mad tweeting? Steer the White House towards decency? No way.”
Now the main question for worried immigrant rights advocates is who will replace Kelly at DHS, because if Kelly represented the cream of the crop in Trump’s cabinet, nearly anything else will be downhill from here. Beleaguered anti-immigrant Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is a rumored pick, as is Kansas’s Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who was eagerly endorsed for vice-president by white supremacists and is now helping Trump suppress votes through a fake voter fraud commission. Under them, an already out-of-control DHS will only stand to get worse.