When Did Donald Trump Call Immigrant Children Animals
Trump Doesn't Demand to Explicate Which Immigrants He Thinks Are "Animals"
His actions tell us plenty.
At a roundtable discussion well-nigh California's sanctuary policies on Wed, President Donald Trump fabricated a remark that quickly dominated the news. Responding to a sheriff who complained that "there could be an MS-13 member I know near" but "cannot tell Water ice almost," because of California'due south immigrant-friendly policies, the president alleged:
We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—and nosotros're stopping a lot of them—just we're taking people out of the state. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals.
Trump's dehumanizing rhetoric sparked instant controversy. Some outlets asserted that the president had called immigrants animals and noted that genocides are frequently preceded by the dehumanization of a minority grouping. Others hedged their bets, noting that Trump may have been referring to members of the MS-13 gang, the subject of the preceding comment. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that his male parent "was specifically talking about MS-13," adding that "they are animals." White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was "very clearly" referring to gang members and scolded the media for "defend[ing] MS-xiii." The AP even deleted a tweet reporting on Trump'south response because "it wasn't made clear that he was speaking afterwards a comment almost gang members."
This dispute largely misses the betoken. Aye, it is of import to have the president's words in context. Let's consider that context: From 24-hour interval i, the Trump assistants has strived to collapse the distinction between undocumented immigrants and gang members. Nether Trump's authority, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up its efforts to categorize police force-abiding immigrants equally "gang-affiliated," thereby subjecting them to detention and deportation. Trump may have been referring to MS-xiii specifically in his roundtable comment. Just to the president and his clearing enforcement officers, well-nigh all Latino immigrants are possible MS-13 members. The two groups might as well be indistinguishable.
Trump, of course, has long implied that a majority of Latino immigrants are criminals. In his presidential proclamation, he notoriously proclaimed: "When United mexican states sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
This view has clearly fueled his governing philosophy. Shortly afterward entering office, Trump made 2 moves that eroded the critical distinction betwixt criminal aliens and all others immigrants. First, he issued executive orders that dramatically expanded clearing agents' ability to target, detain, and deport any undocumented immigrant, including those accused of no crime. 2nd, he appointed Thomas Homan to lead Ice, who quickly hired Jon Feere every bit a "special adviser."
Feere previously worked at the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration advocacy groups founded by John Tanton. An infamous white nationalist, Tanton once wrote that "for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." He besides warned of a "Latin onslaught" and questioned whether minorities "can run an advanced lodge."
At CIS, Feere focused on MS-13, arguing that, in order to take downwards the gang, police force enforcement would demand to engage in a broader crackdown on immigrant communities. In 2008, he authored a white paper arguing that lawmakers should cite the threat posed by MS-13 to justify much harsher enforcement of immigration laws. In a video flagged by the Intercept's Lee Fang, Feere asserted that the best way to expel MS-13 is to drive immigrants out of public life under the assumption that a huge number of seemingly innocent individuals are secretly affiliated with gangs.
Information technology is no surprise that Homan hired Feere; the ICE primary oft deploys xenophobic rhetoric and reportedly refers to undocumented immigrants as "tonks," a slur derived from the sound of beating in an immigrant'due south caput. Once installed at the bureau, Feere found that the groundwork for his CIS proposals had already been laid. Since 2006, ICE has been edifice a database of ostensible gang members that uses outrageously vague criteria as gang-affiliated, assuasive agents to categorize an immigrant as a gang member on the basis of uncorroborated hearsay. The agency also draws from land-level databases like CalGang that are similarly overinclusive. For example, a country audit of CalGang in 2016 found that 42 individuals under the age of 1 were considered gang members—including 28 infants who allegedly "admitted to existence gang members." A few other examples of individuals falsely labeled as gang members:
• ICE defendant an undocumented immigrant named Sergio of beingness a gang member considering he had the messages "H.S." tattooed higher up 1 countenance. "H.Southward." were the initials of his daughter, but Ice insisted that they stood for the "Hillside gang." No such gang exists.
• Police force officers in Salt Lake City conducted a "gang sweep" in a high schoolhouse by entering classrooms, photographing 24 students of color, and adding them to a gang database. They appear to have targeted these students exclusively on the ground of their pare color.
• Water ice revoked a Dreamer's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program status and defendant him of existence "gang-affiliated" because he had a tattoo commemorating his birthplace. A federal judge later ruled that Ice agents were lying about the Dreamer'southward alleged gang affiliation.
Information technology is essentially impossible to have one's name removed from a gang database. And as shortly as immigrants has been added to the organization, they become high priorities for detention and displacement. That'south why, under Trump, Water ice agents are eager to use whatsoever "prove" they can to accuse every bit many immigrants as possible of membership in a gang. In 2017, one Ice officer, candidly acknowledged this strategy to CBS correspondent Margaret Brennan. During a ride-forth with ICE during an clearing raid, Brennan witnessed agents classify an private equally an associate of MS-13 without any indication that he actually was. She asked an ICE agent, Jason Molina, why they'd given the immigrant this baseless label.
"The purpose of classifying him as a gang member or a gang associate," Molina responded, "is because one time he goes in front of an clearing judge, we don't desire him to become bail, because the whole bespeak of this operation is to get these known gang members off the street." Molina effectively conceded that his agency maligns undocumented immigrants as gang members in order to justify their arrest and expedite their deportation. Show of gang membership is optional.
So, back to the question at hand. Who are the animals to whom Trump referred on Wednesday? Sure, he may have meant individuals accused by his administration of associating with MS-13. Just since Ice operates under the supposition that every undocumented immigrant information technology nabs is an MS-thirteen member, the distinction disappears. With the president'due south blessing, America's immigration agents have come to brand all undocumented immigrants as gang members. Trump's defenders desire u.s. to consider his comments in context. And the context is that "animals" are whomever ICE decides to dehumanize for their own convenience.
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/immigrants-or-gang-members-theyre-all-animals-to-trump.html
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