Friday morning's report from the Associated Press that the Trump regime had drafted an 11-page memo detailing the use of as many as 100,000 national guard troops as a deportation force met an immediate denial from the White House that this was the plan. Immediate, that is, after the story went out. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the AP tweet was "100 percent false" and that "I wish you guys had asked before you tweeted." Which, in fact, the AP did. From that AP story:
Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as Friday, staffers in several different offices reported discussions were underway.
DHS in fact confirms that the document exists, saying that it is "a very early, pre decisional draft ... and was never seriously considered by the Department." But it's a detailed 11-page memo "addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection."
Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo says participating troops would be authorized "to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States." It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any unauthorized immigrants. […]According to the draft memo, the militarization effort would be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.
The "also dated" in the quote refers to the fact that the now defunct Muslim ban executive order was signed on that day, suggesting that the administration was planning a very big day of crackdowns. As Brandon Friedman, one-time Daily Kos community member and formerly an Obama administration employee points out: "There's no such thing as 'never seriously considered.' Departments are short-staffed. They don't produce these things because they're bored." This memo exists and DHS staff spent considerable time researching and writing it. They weren't freelancing when they did it. Someone ordered them to write it, and it wasn't done on anyone's free time.
The memo 100 percent exists and it exists to heighten the fear in the immigrant community. It surfaces in the midst of the DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounding up parents of American children and legally protected children of immigrants and a victim of domestic violence, who they seized at the courthouse as she was getting a restraining order against her boyfriend, who turned her into ICE in retaliation.
That's the atmosphere of fear that the Trump regime is intent on fomenting, the atmosphere that creates this:
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