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Tag: customs and border patrol
Katharine Gorka, Anti-Muslim Commentator, Will Be Named Border Patrol Press Aide

Katharine Gorka, Anti-Muslim Commentator, Will Be Named Border Patrol Press Aide

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Katharine Gorka, who is expected to take over as the new Customs and Border Protection press secretary, previously falsely claimed that “the Muslim community in this country really isn’t working with us to prevent” terrorism.

CNN reported on June 18 that Gorka “is expected to be the new press secretary at Customs and Border Protection. Acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders told CNN Tuesday that Gorka is expected to take the position and he advocated for her to join the agency.” Gorka, who has been working as a senior adviser in the Department of Homeland Security since January 2017, also previously wrote for Breitbart.com. She is married to right-wing radio host and anti-Muslim commentator Sebastian Gorka.

BuzzFeed News reported in August 2017 that she has been “advising top officials at DHS on counter-terror policies, drafting the department’s reports to Congress on terrorism recruitment, and trying to instill her anti-Islamist philosophy throughout the department.” HuffPost and BuzzFeed News also reported that she helped deny funding from the Countering Violent Extremism program to Life After Hate, a nonprofit that works to help “people leave the violent far-right.”

During her time as a right-wing commentator, Gorka repeatedly made anti-Muslim remarks. In one appearance roughly half a year before entering the Trump administration, she specifically took issue with the Muslim community in the United States, complaining that Muslims purportedly aren’t “working with us to prevent” terrorist acts.

Gorka appeared on the August 3, 2016, edition of Sandy Rios in the Morning, a radio program hosted by anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim bigot Sandy Rios. While speaking about ISIS, Rios wondered if “there is a way that Muslims who are friends to the West” can distinguish themselves, and said that the “onus is on” Muslims to say that they’re “not a Sharia-compliant Muslim.”

Gorka answered: “That’s a burning question and I know that there’s a longstanding frustration that I share: Why more Muslims in this country haven’t stood up against this.” She then claimed that “about 110 ISIS supporters arrested or killed in this country since this all started in about March 2014, and a very small percentage were turned in by people who knew them. So that said that the Muslim community in this country really isn’t working with us to prevent this. And that should be disturbing to everyone.”

IMAGE: Katharine Gorka.

Family Separations: DHS Secretary Nielsen Accused Of Lying To Congress

Family Separations: DHS Secretary Nielsen Accused Of Lying To Congress

During her disastrous Wednesday hearing on the Trump administration’s inhumane family separation policy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Congress that she didn’t know of any parents who were deported without being given the chance to bring their children with them.

But just hours later, TPM reports, Trump’s own Department of Justice filed a court document that contradicted her testimony — and indicates that Nielsen may have lied to Congress.

The court filing admits that up to 471 parents may have been deported without being given the chance to reunite with their children. The filing was part of an ongoing class action lawsuit against the government on behalf of those parents — many of whom say they were tricked into signing away their rights to ever see their kids again.

But during her testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, Nielsen acted like she had never heard of this lawsuit or those parents.

Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) asked Nielsen, “Can you confirm that there has never been a parent deported, under your tenure, without finding out if they want their children to go with them?”

“To the best of my knowledge every parent was afforded that option,” Nielsen responded, under oath.

The question from Rice was a follow-up to an earlier question along the same lines from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), to whom Nielsen responded, “There was no parent who has been deported, to my knowledge, without multiple opportunities to take their children with them.”

After Nielsen doubled down on her denial, Rice accused her of breaking the law by lying to Congress.

“This is a lie,” Rice said on Twitter. “Lying to Congress under oath is a felony. The last person who did that is going to prison.”

Rice was likely referring to Trump’s longtime attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump’s involvement in business dealings about a proposed development in Russia.

Evidence contradicting Nielsen’s testimony has been available in news reports for months. But the DOJ’s court filing that same day put an especially fine point on it.

In a joint status report filed in federal court hours after Nielsen testified, DOJ lawyers admitted 471 parents may have been deported “without their children, and without being given the opportunity to elect or waive reunification in accordance with the preliminary injunction.”

471 parents is significantly more than the zero parents Nielsen claims she knew of.

During the height of the Trump administration’s cruel family separation policy, many parents complained that they were tricked into agreeing to be deported without taking their children with them. Buzzfeed reported that some parents who did not speak English were pressured to sign documents they could not read, which gave up their right to reunite with their children. Other parents signed documents thinking it was the only way to be reunited, only to find out later the documents meant the opposite.

Evidence of these atrocities have been in the public domain since at least July 2018.

Nielsen either knew this — which would mean she lied to Congress — or should have known this yet somehow didn’t. That means that at best, she was neglecting one of the most high-profile issues facing her department.

Published with permission of The American Independent. 

IMAGE: Kirstjen Nielsen is sworn in at a hearing on her nomination to become the 6th Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee in Washington, D.C., Nov. 08, 2017. 

Second Migrant Child, 8, Dies In US Custody

Second Migrant Child, 8, Dies In US Custody

An eight year-old boy from Guatemala, under detention by Customs and Border Protection, died shortly after midnight on Christmas Day at a New Mexico hospital. He is the second migrant child to die in U.S. custody at the border in December.

He was identified as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, in a statement released by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), who said that “many questions remain unanswered, including how many children have died in CBP custody.”

The first migrant child to die in US custody was seven year-old Jakelin Caal, also from Guatemala. She died of dehydration and shock on Dec. 8, less than two days after border agents apprehended her and her father.

Immediately after Felipe’s death, the CBP ordered medical assessments of 700 minors held in its El Paso sector, where both dead children were held, according to the Washington Post.

A CBP news release indicated that Felipe had become ill on Monday and was diagnosed with “a cold” at a hospital in Alamagordo, N.M. “The child was held for an additional 90 minutes for observation and then released from the hospital mid-afternoon on December 24 with prescriptions for amoxicillin [a common oral antibiotic] and Ibuprofen,” according to the CBP statement,

But when the boy vomited on Monday night, he was returned to the Alamagordo hospital, where he died several hours later. The cause of death is still unknown, as are details about his place of detention and the length of time he and his father were held.

As Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, told the Washington Post,: “The reality is that a detention center is no place for a child, particularly a sick child. When that child was determined to be ill, had a 103-degree fever, why they would send that child back to a detention center, which is really not fit for even a well child?”

IMAGE: A Donald Trump for President campaign sticker is shown attached to a U.S. Customs sign hanging on the border fence between Mexico and the United States  February 8, 2017.. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Danziger: Not Gilded

Danziger: Not Gilded

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.