The Department of Homeland Security sent Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin to Newsmax on Tuesday to clarify some issues about immigrant raids. She did not succeed.
When asked about the apparent contradiction between President Donald Trump’s recent statements, which claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on worksites and hotels would be scaled back, McLaughlin sidestepped the question. “So worksite operations are very much a cornerstone of our enforcement operations,” she responded.
“So this is places where we do find the worst of the worst. These criminal illegal aliens that the president has a mandate to get off of American streets. So we will continue to do that,” McLaughlin continued. “There's no safe harbor, whether it be a church or a courthouse or a worksite. We will come for you. We will arrest you. You will be deported.”
The claim that ICE raids target only the most violent criminals remains one of the Trump administration’s most egregious lies. A recent CNN report revealed that less than 10% of those detained in Trump’s raids have serious criminal convictions like assault, rape, or murder, while over 75% were detained by ICE with nothing more on their record than immigration or traffic-related offenses.
Trump’s attempts to soften the backlash from his wildly unpopular military invasion of California have so far failed, largely because his own Department of Homeland Services doesn’t seem to be reading his memos. McLaughlin’s failure to address Newsmax’s simple question echoes comments from border czar Tom Homan suggesting Trump’s statements have no bearing on what current immigration policy is. “I have not seen any instruction, anything that changes in the near future,” Homan recently told the Washington Post.
Trump’s terrible ideas have left him in a no-win situation. Targeting the agriculture industries alienates his base and hurts the economy, and focusing on sanctuary cities only strengthens an already existing, and far more sophisticated, opposition to his totalitarian efforts. Add the fact that his department heads seem to be treating his directives as bloviations, and you have an emperor with no clothes.
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