Yesterday The Hill published this opinion piece by Brian Lonergan, the director of communications at the Immigration Reform Law Institute which bills itself as “a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of illegal migration.”
It is an anti-immigrant and anti-refuge screed which begins:
Americans care about children. We get upset when we hear stories or see images of children in distress. The problem is, some in positions of power exploit that concern to achieve their political agendas. They use words and show images that don’t reflect the truth.
This is happening on our southern border with reckless abandon. The Trump administration’s immigration priorities are toppling the dysfunctional status quo in Washington, and the open borders lobby is fighting back by using a playbook that has served it well for many years. They just used it again with the children on the border crisis story with great success.
The playbook goes something like this: Identify an issue, in this case, the immigration laws whereby children of illegal aliens were housed separately while their parents’ cases are being adjudicated. Then spread wild misrepresentations, sensationalism and flat-out lies about the targeted policy. Next, deploy fellow travelers in the media, entertainment and the pundit class to pile on manufactured outrage at the enforcers of such a purportedly sinister policy. After several days of scathing media coverage declaring the entire nation aghast at the policy, the president calms his panic-stricken congressional allies and seeks to appease the angry mob.
According to the website of the organization where Brian Lonegran is the communications director:
The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) is FAIR's* affiliated legal organization. It is the only public interest non-profit law firm in the United States devoted exclusively to protecting the rights and interests of Americans in immigration-related matters.
IRLI works extensively with state and local governments to design legislation that effectively addresses problems resulting from illegal immigration.
IRLI also represents Americans injured by illegal immigration and advises U.S. workers and property-owners on how to protect their jobs, working conditions, and businesses against employers who hire unauthorized alien workers in their communities.
In 2018, IRLI launched Attorneys United for a Secure America (AUSA), a non-partisan network of attorneys dedicated to pursuing cases that serve the national interest when it comes to immigration law.
*The Federation for American Immigration Reform
The last paragraph above is no doubt a lie unless they have a token Democrat. But what else is new?
The OpEd includes a video of Trump addressing families of supposed victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
What exactly is the Immigration Reform Institute?
It is the legal arm of The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
And what exactly is that?
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) it is “a group with one mission: to severely limit immigration into the United States. Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness.”
FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group’s main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a "mistake." Read much more here from the SPLC report
The Hill has other opinion essays on the immigration crisis created by Trump. In each of these, the bios of the authors are clear. For example:
Judith Tedlie Moskowitz is a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University. She is a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project.