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In past few weeks alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has demonstrably lied about the shooting death of Claudia Patricia Gómez González while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lost a San Francisco spokesperson who preferred to resign and be unemployed rather than continue spreading lies for ICE soon-to-retire acting director Thomas Homan, but the head of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants you to know that you’re the liar for talking about the shit ICE and CBP have done:
"In the last couple of weeks, there has been a massive, just dishonest, information campaign, and it's being waged against DHS," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday near the border fence in Nogales. "And it's a misinformation campaign being waged by those who either harbor an unfounded distrust of CBP (border) or ICE (immigration) officers, or who just don't want to see us secure our borders."
In the past few weeks there’s been a concerted media effort to make Nielsen look sympathetic (wonder who started that!), claiming she’s stood up to anti-immigrant lies from the White House’s no. 2 white supremacist, Stephen Miller. But she works for Donald Trump because she believes in the same reprehensible shit as Donald Trump, including separating families at the U.S./Mexico border and calling you the liar for pointing out the truth.
That includes the fact that immigration officials lie. They lie about raids, they lie about immigrants being gang members, and they lie about immigrants they kill. When a Border Patrol agent fatally shot Claudia Patricia Gómez González last week, the agency quickly got out its own set of facts, claiming she ambushed him with “blunt objects.” But when an eyewitness disputed this, the agency’s second statement dropped any mention of “blunt objects,” stopped referring to her as an “assailant,” and canceled a press conference.
But remember, we’re the liars.
Federal immigration officials’ apparent inability to tell the truth has even earned the attention of U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez, who, quite literally, ordered the Trump administration to stop repeating false accusations that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient Daniel Ramirez Medina has gang affiliations. The administration has been targeting Ramirez Medina for deportation since last year, when he was swept up in a raid targeting his dad:
Ramirez, 25, came to the U.S. at age 10. He drew international attention when the government revoked his DACA status early last year and placed him in deportation proceedings, even though he has no criminal record and three times passed background checks to participate in the program.
ICE officials doctored a document to make it look like Ramirez Medina was in a gang, with his attorney calling it “one of the most serious examples of governmental misconduct that I have come across in my 40 years of practice.” ICE released him after six weeks in custody, but not before revoking his protections. Ramirez Medina eventually won his DACA back, but the administration again drummed up the fake allegations to try and revoke it yet again. During court proceedings last month, Judge Martinez ordered the government to fucking quit it:
“Most troubling to the court, is the continued assertion that Mr. Ramirez is gang-affiliated, despite providing no evidence,” the judge wrote. “For these reasons, the court finds that defendants’ continued assertion that plaintiff is a gang member or gang-affiliated is arbitrary and capricious.”
The federal government, Martinez wrote in his order keeping Ramirez Medina’s DACA protections in place while his litigation continues, “is ENJOINED from asserting, adopting, or relying in any proceedings on any statement or record made as of this date purporting to allege or establish that Mr. Ramirez is a gang member, gang affiliated, or a threat to public safety.”
But remember, we’re the liars.