Republican lawmakers have defended President Donald Trump's lawless and deadly immigration crackdown as federal agents violently round up people of color and hold them in squalid and inhumane detention facilities in an effort to meet an arbitrary deportation quota set by Trump aide Stephen Miller, a wannabe Joseph Goebbels.
But as soon as the deportation force comes to their home states, the GOP lawmakers’ tune changes real quick.
For example, get a load of Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who on Wednesday sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem voicing opposition to the Trump administration's plan to convert a giant warehouse in his state into an immigrant detention facility.
"While I support the enforcement of immigration law, I write to express my opposition to this acquisition and the proposed detention center," Wicker wrote.
He added:
This site is currently positioned for economic development purposes. It represents an opportunity for job creation, private investment, and long-term economic growth in Marshall County. The county is already experiencing meaningful growth and increased interest from employers seeking to locate or expand in North Mississippi. Preserving limited, development-ready industrial sites is essential to sustaining this growth. Converting this industrial asset into an [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits.
What a morally bankrupt position to stake out.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, shown last May.
First, Wicker is not opposed to converting a warehouse into an inhumane human storage locker. He's instead mad that it will strain local resources and hurt business opportunities in his state.
Of course, those problems would exist in other states, too, but as long as it's not happening in his own backyard, he's cool with it.
Then take a gander at perpetually "concerned" Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who apparently worked behind the scenes to get Trump to pull his goons from her state, where they had been carrying out the same violent and unconstitutional immigration crackdown that Minnesota is suffering.
Collins said in a statement on Jan. 29:
I have been urging Secretary Noem and others in the Administration to get ICE to reconsider its approach to immigration enforcement in the state [Maine]. I appreciate the Secretary's willingness to listen to and consider my recommendations and her personal attention to the situation in Maine. ICE and Customs and Border Protection will continue their normal operations that have been ongoing here for many years. I will continue to work with the Secretary on efforts to end illegal immigration, drug smuggling, and other transnational criminal activity.
In fact, Fox News host and Trump sycophant Brian Kilmeade said Tuesday on his radio show that DHS removed agents from Maine to help Collins politically since she faces a difficult reelection and ICE's unpopular raids would hurt her chances.
"Huge arrests over in Maine, although they're winding down a little in Maine to help Sen. Susan Collins, who's gonna be in a tough fight to keep her seat," Kilmeade said. "And why does the president want Susan Collins to win? She's about the only Republican that can win in Maine. They don't wanna flip that seat [to Democrats].”
Collins, however, isn't doing anything to rein in ICE's conduct in other states.
Instead, she is fighting changes to the DHS funding bill that would put constraints on ICE agent conduct. She even yukked it up with Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, leading to an image of her standing by Trump with a red MAGA hat—a photo that will certainly feature prominently in attack ads against her.
Republicans don't give two flying fucks about Trump's anti-immigration cruelty—until it starts to negatively impact them. Then they'll do the bare minimum to stop the conduct in their backyards, while letting it continue elsewhere.
