For the third time since April, a top Trump official is set to speak at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), an innocuous sounding organization that is actually a designated anti-immigrant hate group founded by white nationalist and eugenicist John Tanton. Yup, this is and always has been an administration of white supremacists, they’re just not even bothering to try and hide it anymore.
CIS “announced that Lee Francis Cissna,” the head of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), “would participate in its ‘Immigration Newsmaker conversation’ at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 15,” the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports, after hosting former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director, Thomas Homan, in June, and Executive Office for Immigration Review’s director, James McHenry, in April.
But that the head of USCIS—historically a paper-pushing agency that processes things like citizenship applications, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewals, and other documentation—will now be openly canoodling with an anti-immigrant hate group just goes to show how deeply entrenched radicals are within the Trump administration. “Cissna,” SPLC continues, “has been praised by many anti-immigrant groups,” and as USCIS head removed “a nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement. Not alarming at all when, well, your job is to help continue making us a nation of immigrants.
CIS itself has been notorious for circulating garbage from anti-Semites and Holocaust-deniers, one of whom called Jewish people “truly subversive,” “manipulative,” and “evil.” Tanton himself “corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and the leading white nationalist thinkers of the era,” and once wrote a paper titled, “The Case for Passive Eugenics.” Charming, and that’s what the head of a U.S. agency is keeping company with this week.
“It’s disgraceful that Francis Cissna would agree to put the weight of his office—and the U.S. government—behind a hate group that exists solely to vilify immigrants,” said SPLC’s Heidi Beirich. “But none of us should be surprised. It’s just one more example of the strong bond between this administration and far-right extremists who will stop at nothing to fuel rage and resentment against immigrants of color.”
