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Tag: kevin mcaleenan
Homeland Security Blocks Congressional Visits To Migrant Detention Centers

Homeland Security Blocks Congressional Visits To Migrant Detention Centers

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has barred staffers from the House Oversight Committee from conducting visits of detention facilities where migrants are being held.

The decision comes after migrants detailed actions and policies that could be considered abusive of detainees, particularly children.

Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) sent a letter to Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Wednesday, objecting to the action.

“I am writing to express my deep concern that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided to block Committee staff from conducting visits to 11 detention facilities just days after previous staff inspections revealed potentially serious ongoing problems with the treatment of children and adults in DHS custody,” Cummings wrote.

On Wednesday, DHS gave Fox News an “exclusive” story claiming that visits had been cut off because Oversight Committee staffers were “disruptive,” quoting anonymous sources who claimed committee staffers “interfered” with law enforcement operations and were “rude.”

Cummings denied these claims in his letter.

“Committee staff were not ‘rude’ and never once refused to abide by instructions from agency officials,” he wrote.

Customs and Border Patrol officials made similar anonymous claims about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in July, telling the conservative Washington Examiner that the congresswoman “screamed” at agents “in a threatening manner.”

“They confiscated my phone, and they were all armed,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response to the attempted smear. “They’re just upset I exposed their inhumane behavior.”

In his letter, Cummings said the committee was blocked from sites “where the Inspector General warned about ‘an immediate risk to the health and safety of DHS agents and officers, and to those detained.'”

In one instance, detainees told the committee they were concerned that toddlers and an infant were being fed burritos instead of appropriately nutritional food.

Among other allegations, Cummings said staffers were told “young children were held in cold rooms without appropriate clothing” and parents were “not given a sufficient number of diapers for their children.”

Cummings said one detainee reported that a Border Patrol agent told a child who spilled soup that they would be denied food “unless the child drank the spilled soup off the floor.”

The chairman also pointed out that the Trump administration “expects Congress to be satisfied with receiving agency tours of facilities—in some cases without the ability to photograph conditions or interview detainees.”

In June, Mike Pence was given a tour of a detention facility with cameras in tow. Trump later said the footage of the media stunt showed a “clean but crowded” facility, while reporters noted that the area had an “overwhelming” stench.

Trump’s policies have led to families being detained in facilities that have been cited by government inspectors for substandard conditions. Now his officials don’t want those in the government tasked with oversight to be allowed inside.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

Mass Arrests Of Immigrant Families To Begin, Despite Warnings By Homeland Security

Mass Arrests Of Immigrant Families To Begin, Despite Warnings By Homeland Security

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to conduct mass arrests of migrants in as many as 10 American cities beginning on Sunday, the Washington Post reported.

The administration had reportedly considered the proposal before, but officials’ objections had stalled the plan. Even now, the Post reported, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan has concerns about the operation. While the current plan will reportedly target as many as 2,000 immigrant families in the country, he has reportedly suggested a smaller scale effort that would only go after 150 families.

The report explained:

McAleenan has warned that an indiscriminate operation to arrest migrants in their homes and at work sites risks separating children from their parents in cases where the children are at day care, summer camp or friend’s houses and not present for the raids. He also has maintained that ICE should not devote major resources to carrying out a mass interior sweep while telling lawmakers it needs emergency funding to address the crisis at the U.S. border.

But President Donald Trump, in an apparent effort to please his base, has made clear that he wants to be seen as tough on immigrants. On Monday, he sent out a tweet saying the administration would soon “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens.” It’s not close to feasible that Trump will be able to achieve that scale of arrests, of course, but part of the purpose seems to be to terrify the immigrant population, so exaggeration is a feature, not a bug. (The Post noted that officials were surprised Trump announced the plans on Twitter since such operations are not usually previewed.)

And while the operation — dubbed the ‘Family Op’ — ostensibly only targets undocumented immigrants, the reporting indicates it will include wide-reaching arrests, suggesting that some people not eligible for deportation could get erroneously detained:

ICE agents have limited intelligence on the locations of the families with court-ordered deportations beyond their last known addresses. But White House and ICE officials believe agents will be able to make many “collateral arrests” by vacuuming up foreigners living in the country illegally at or near the target locations.

Even if the operation goes off entirely as planned, however, it would constitute a devastating attack on immigrant communities, capriciously destroying families and traumatizing children.

The open animus behind the effort is glaring. Since there are millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, immigration enforcement is invariably about making decisions about which enforcement actions to prioritize. Under President Barack Obama, the administration moved toward focusing on deportations of immigrants who committed serious crimes.

By focusing instead on families, Trump reveals that “crime” isn’t really what he cares about in immigration enforcement — even as he uses false suggestions of immigrant criminality to justify targeting immigrants in the first place. If the government actually cares about reducing crime, it can focus its limited resources on responding to actual crimes. If what it really cares about, though, is making the lives of immigrant families worse and pleasing racist voters, then the “Family Op” fits the bill.

IMAGE: Relatives separated by deportation and immigration hug at the border during a brief reunification meeting at the banks of the Rio Bravo, a natural border between U.S. and Mexico, October 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

At Hearing, DHS Chief Admits White Supremacist Terror ‘Is A Problem’

At Hearing, DHS Chief Admits White Supremacist Terror ‘Is A Problem’

On Thursday, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan confirmed white supremacists are an “increasingly concerning threat,” during a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee, contradicting Trump’s yearslong attempts to minimize the problem.

“The president doesn’t see this as a threat,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) said as he asked for McAleenan’s assessment.

McAleenan responded, “I am concerned about white supremacist extremists and the growing attacks, especially that we’ve seen on houses of worship. I absolutely agree it’s a problem and we need to work to address it.”

The statement is in stark contrast to Trump’s habitually soft position on white supremacists, which makes sense in light of his habit of agreeing with them.

After the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump argued that white supremacists are not a big concern.

They are “a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” Trump said in March.

In reality, there were about 150 arrests for domestic terrorism in 2017 and about 120 in 2018. CNN reported on Thursday that an FBI official told them “the FBI is on course to match or exceed those numbers this fiscal year.” There are currently 1,000 ongoing FBI investigations into homegrown violent extremism.

But under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice has been working to hide how white supremacist crimes are reported and investigated, and Homeland Security has shut downunits dedicated to fighting domestic terrorists.

At the same time, Trump has used the presidency to promote white supremacists, and he has repeated their rhetoric and conspiracies about an “invasion” of Latino migrants to the United States.

McAleenan testimony shows once again how disconnected from reality Trump is. That is a danger for every American.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

House Judiciary Panel Probing Trump’s Reported Pardon Offer

House Judiciary Panel Probing Trump’s Reported Pardon Offer

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The House Judiciary Committee revealed Tuesday that it is pursuing information about the allegation that President Donald Trump offered Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan a pardon if he broke, on the president’s order, the law and blocked asylum seekers from entering the United States.

The allegation that Trump made the offer broke last week. It was first reported by CNN, and then confirmed by the New York Times; both outlets, however, noted that it was unclear whether Trump was making a joke.

Because of the way Trump speaks, it is often unclear if he is making a joke — and this ambiguity is often intentional at times. But if the report about what he said is accurate, it should be taken seriously on its face. CNN also reported that Trump told a group of border agents to deny entry to asylum seekers, an order the agents took seriously enough that they had to ask their supervisors whether they should follow the order (the supervisors reportedly said no).

And as I argued last week, the offer of a pardon is just a continuation of Trump’s authoritarian streak in this area. He has already pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was held in contempt of court when he refused to stop racially profiling people he believed were undocumented immigrants. Clearly, Trump was sending the message that this behavior — in defiance of a court’s judgment — was completely appropriate. It’s not a surprise that Trump would progress to offering such pardons preemptively.

“Given the Committee’s continuing concerns relating to the Administration’s compliance with the nation’s immigration laws, as well as possible misuses of the pardon power that is part of the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into whether President Trump may have engaged in obstruction of justice or abuses of power, we request that you promptly provide details concerning this reported directive to close the border and the related offer of a pardon,” the committee’s letter said.

It continued: “These allegations, if true, would represent a grave breach of the duties of the President. Congress has an independent constitutional duty to provide oversight of the administration of government by the Executive Branch.”

Trump has denied the reports about the supposed offer of a pardon. However, the White House had previously denied that the administration was seriously considering sending detained immigrants to sanctuary cities as a form of political retaliation, only for the president to confirm that deliberations over the idea were ongoing. So it’s difficult to take any statements from the White House at face value.

IMAGE: Immigrants wait for a naturalization ceremony held at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office on January 17, 2014 in New York City