President Donald Trump continues to push for a border wall blocking off Mexico to stop supposedly crime-infested “caravans” of asylum seekers from making it into the United States, and this week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen made clear that she is fully on board with the president’s drastic plans.
She responded to the arrival of a caravan of some 2,000 asylum seekers at the border near Texas by demanding — as Trump has done — that Congress provide billions of dollars for a wall.
She ranted:
‘Illegal entry will not be tolerated and we stand ready to prevent it. The Department of Homeland Security has been working… to ensure all possible resources are available to address this lawless caravan… Such caravans are the result of Congress’s inexcusable failure to fund a fully needed physical barrier and unwillingness to fix outdated laws that act as an enormous magnet for illegal aliens.’
Inbox: Secretary Nielsen Statement on New Migrant ‘Caravan’
DHS Secretary blames it on the “inexcusable failure to fully fund a needed physical barrier” and change other immigration laws. pic.twitter.com/6fAf4N6Cg0
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 5, 2019
To yet again be clear, the asylum seekers at the southern border do not harbor some kind of secret gangs of criminals. They are not a threat. The Trump administration has gone into attack mode because people with a non-white skin color dare challenge their egomania and come into the U.S. some way other than they want them to.
Seeking asylum itself is not illegal, despite the Trump administration’s best efforts. They’ve been stopped in court multiple times in efforts to roll back asylum protections including via blocking those who cross outside of ports of entry and those who flee gang and domestic violence from claiming asylum.
In other words — there’s close to no evidence to support Nielsen’s propaganda that the caravan is “lawless” and American communities must be kept safe from the “invasion,” as Trump has repeatedly termed the asylum seeking process.
She’s not a particularly credible source on matters of immigration to begin with, repeatedly proving fiercely committed to the Trump administration’s wild egomania above close to all else. She insisted to Congress that there was no family separation policy while her department was assisting in punitively separating undocumented immigrant families at the border after having explicitly explored that specific tactic in previous months.
The family separations that Nielsen treated as an inexorable divine law — or something — were eventually blocked in court, although the Trump administration fumbled hundreds and hundreds of cases, leaving children separated long after a judge demanded they were returned to their families.
House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) will be hosting Nielsen for testimony on March 6 after threatening to subpoena her to answer for the administration’s border security plans.
In the meantime, President Trump will be delivering his State of the Union address this Tuesday in which he’s expected to again make his own case for his “border security” proposals. He’s previously taken dramatic steps in service of his immigration policy agenda including shutting down the government for over a month because Congress wouldn’t give him wall money and offering his first and so far only primetime Oval Office address to the nation — but through it all, the realities of the situation haven’t changed.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
