Washington, DC — The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are desperate to signal to the American public that they’ve turned the page on their deeply unpopular mass deportation agenda. Examples include:
- Ongoing Republican attempts to revamp the messaging around mass deportation – without backing away from the underlying policy agenda.
- Last night’s confirmation of Senator Markwayne Mullin as the new DHS Secretary.
- Attempts to characterize the latest in fast-moving DHS shutdown negotiations as a breakthrough, despite the lack of real reforms and accountability for immigration enforcement being proposed.
Yet whether it’s messaging, Markwayne Mullin, or the GOP spin around the shutdown, the reality is that no real change is on the table regarding the underlying mass deportation, anti-immigrant agenda led by Trump and Stephen Miller. Meanwhile, the dangerous, unnecessary and absurd deployment of ICE agents to airports is a visual reminder of what the government shutdown is all about – the American public’s strong desire to rein in an out-of-control immigration enforcement agency and reorient the misplaced priorities of this administration.
According to Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice, “There may be a new captain of the DHS ship, but it is still heading for an iceberg. More to the point, ICE has landed with a thud and public outrage at dozens of America’s airports. The cruelty, chaos, and violence inherent to this administration’s mass deportation agenda remains intact, when what is needed is a dramatic change in course. This means actually reining in ICE and CBP and providing real guardrails that a majority of Americans are demanding. The colossally misplaced priorities of the White House and Congressional Republicans must be realigned. We don’t need new messaging, insufficient proposed reforms to ICE or pretending that Markwayne Mullin or any other enabler of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are prepared to change the reality on the ground.”
As a reminder of why real reform to the anti-immigrant agenda is needed, read:
- The ProPublica investigative story released yesterday, “Trump Has Detained the Parents of More Than 11,000 U.S. Citizen Kids” which highlights that more than 11,000 American families have been separated due to this administration’s mass deportation agenda. That data counts only the first seven months of this administration, meaning that the 11,000 figure “will have roughly doubled by now,” if the pace continued … “an average of more than 50 U.S. citizen kids a day with a parent pulled into detention.”
- NPR, “ICE deployments created chaos for cities and cost them millions, NPR analysis finds,” highlighting the staggering economic and broader costs to civic cohesion in cities like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere that have been the focus of this administration’s immigration enforcement deployments.
