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kirstjen nielsen
'Damning' New IG Report, Says ACLU, Shows Just How Far Trump Team 'Was Willing to Go to Destroy' Immigrant Families
"Just when you think the Trump administration can't sink any lower, it does."
Jan 13, 2021
As a former leading U.S. Justice Department official on Thursday said he regretted the role he played in the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" migrant family separation policy in the wake of a scathing inspector general report, human and civil rights groups pointed to the probe's findings as "damning" proof of the administration's cruelty toward people seeking refuge in the United States.
"The incoming administration must reunite the separated families in the United States, but we cannot stop there. These families deserve citizenship, resources, care, and a commitment that family separation will never happen again."
--Lee Gelernt, ACLU
The inspector general's report (pdf) concluded that President Donald Trump, ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and other senior officials were woefully unprepared when U.S. agents started seizing thousands of migrant children from their asylum-seeking parents and relatives who were often imprisoned in concentration camps after entering the United States, first in a 2017 DOJ pilot program and then nationwide the following year.
The report, based on interviews with dozens of DOJ officials and a review of over 200,000 emails and other electronic files, directly implicates Trump in the disastrous policy. It also found that senior administration officials were "fully aware" that the policy would result in children being separated from their families but pressed ahead with it anyway.
In response to the report, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thusday released a statement of regret.
"Since leaving the department, I have often asked myself what we should have done differently, and no issue has dominated my thinking more than the zero tolerance immigration policy," Rosenstein told NBC News. "It was a failed policy that never should have been proposed or implemented. I wish we all had done better."
The ACLU--which successfully sued to block family separation and immediately reunite families--led human and civil rights groups in reacting to what it called the "damning" report.
"The barbaric family separation practice was immoral and illegal," said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who led the family separation suit, in a statement on Thursday. "This new report shows just how far the Trump administration was willing to go to destroy these families. Just when you think the Trump administration can't sink any lower, it does."
The new DOJ report's findings correspond with those of a 21-month House Judiciary Committee investigation published last October that accused the Trump administration of "reckless incompetence and intentional cruelty" in its implementation of the zero tolerance policy. In November, Conmon Dreams reported that 666 children--about 20% of whom were under the age of 5 when they were ripped away from their parents--remained separated from their families.
As a result of the separation policy, both parents and children--who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again--have suffered tremendous emotional and psychological trauma that Physicians for Human Rights has called "torture" and "state-sanctioned child abuse."
Some of the seized children have been placed in U.S. families, who are sometimes able to petition for permanent custody, and it is feared that some of the children may indeed never see their parents again.
In late June 2018, as public outrage mounted in the face of stories like a breastfeeding baby being torn away from her mother and a father driven to suicide after being separated from his wife and child, the administration reluctantly rolled back the policy--which, along with forced surgical removal of reproductive organs of migrant women has been called the Trump administration's worst domestic human rights violation.
During the 2020 election, President-elect Joe Biden vowed to form a task force to reunite all of the separated children with their relatives. Gelernt stressed that he must now follow through on his promise.
"The Biden-Harris administration will inherit the legacy of family separation, and we don't doubt that more horrific details will continue to emerge," the ACLU attorney said. "We need them to act with urgency--every day without action makes it harder to find and reunite families."
"The incoming administration must reunite the separated families in the United States, but we cannot stop there," Gelernt added. "These families deserve citizenship, resources, care, and a commitment that family separation will never happen again."
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'She Should Be Shunned': Fortune Magazine Holds Fast Despite Outrage Over Kirstjen Nielsen's Presence at Women's Summit
"Fortune needs to see the writing on the wall."
Oct 21, 2019
Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Women Summit 2019 is down three high-profile speakers due to the continued presence at the event of former Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, whose involvement in implementing President Donald Trump's family separation policy triggered calls for attendees to boycott the forum.
"She should be shunned," tweeted Florida Democratic activist Pam Keith of Nielsen.
Filmmaker dream hampton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile all dropped out of the event in recent days, with hampton and Carlile specifically citing Nielsen's presence as the motivating factor for dropping out. Clinton spokesperson Nick Merill told HuffPost Clinton had a conflict, though an unnamed source claimed the decision was because of Nielsen.
As Common Dreams reported on October 11, news that Nielsen was speaking at the event triggered a boycott movement by Credo Action and other progressive groups.
"Fortune Magazine doesn't seem to get it," Credo Action campaign manager Jelani Drew-Davi said in a statement. "If they had listened to the more than 50,000 grassroots activists who signed a petition calling on them to disinvite Nielsen, they would still have powerful women leaders like Hillary Clinton, dream hampton, and Brandi Carlile attending their event. Instead, Fortune is left with a woman who put children in cages and self-inflicted damage to their reputation."
According to the event schedule, Nielsen is slated to be questioned on her time at Homeland Security by PBS NewsHour journalist Amna Nawaz at 2:35pm on Tuesday. During Nielsen's tenure, she presided over the administration's child separation policy, which the Health and Human Services department revealed Friday ripped 1,250 more children from their parents than was previously reported. That number is expected to be confirmed this week.
In a statement, Fortune spokesperson Alison Klooster defended the inclusion of Nielsen and said that because powerful women have "strong views about how the U.S. administration has handled its immigration policy," the forum provided the opportunity to confront one of those "effectively responsible" for the policy.
"We brought in Amna Nawaz from PBS NewsHour to do the interview with the clear understanding that this would be a no-holds-barred interview, and that there would be an opportunity for our MPW members to ask questions, as well," said Klooster. "That's how we practice live journalism."
But that reasoning didn't please Credo's Drew-Davi, who called the justification insufficient to provide Nielsen with a platform.
"Fortune needs to see the writing on the wall, stop hiding their bad decision behind the First Amendment, and show real journalistic integrity by canceling the Nielsen session immediately," said Drew-Davi.
Remaining attendees Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), lawyer Anita Hill, former ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and actress Eva Longoria were under pressure Monday on social media to join hampton, Carlile, and Clinton in dropping out of the event.
In a tweet, lawyer Scott Hechinger expressed his dismay that Nielsen was being honored as a "powerful woman."
"How could they not just normalize her, but lionize her?" Hechinger wondered.
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Calls Grow for Fortune Magazine to Rescind Kirstjen Nielsen Invitation to 'Women in Power' Summit
"Fortune should not be giving Nielsen, or others like her, a platform to rehabilitate her appropriately damaged reputation."
Oct 11, 2019
Progressives are decrying a decision by Fortune Magazine to feature Kirstjen Nielsen, the former secretary of Homeland Security whose tenure was marked by child separation, child detention, and other harsh anti-immigration measures promoted by President Donald Trump, as a speaker at the company's Most Powerful Women Summit 2019.
"Kirstjen Nielsen does not deserve to have a platform at Fortune's MPW Summit," said Restore Public Trust's Karl Frisch. "Nielsen helped carry out Trump's horrific family separation policy. On Nielsen's watch, children taken from their families were abused and sexually assaulted. Some even died. Fortune should not be giving Nielsen, or others like her, a platform to rehabilitate her appropriately damaged reputation."
In September, as Common Dreams reported, Nielsen dropped out of a previously planned appearance at The Atlantic Ideas Conference due to public outcry over The Atlantic Magazine hosting her and "providing a platform to people who worked hand-in-hand with Trump to separate families, lock babies up in cages, and terrorize communities of color."
On Tuesday, Nielsen rejoined the Trump administration after the president appointed her to his National Infrastructure Advisory Committee.
The Fortune summit, which features other politicos such as former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former U.N. ambasssador Susan Rice, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), and others, will be held from October 21 to 23 in Washington, D.C.
According to the summit's website, it "has evolved into the world's most extraordinary leadership community, convening the preeminent women in business--along with select leaders in government, philanthropy, education, and the arts--for wide-ranging conversations that inspire and deliver practical advice."
Frisch, of Restore Public Trust, said that he doubted Nielsen was the right person for the job.
"After helping to put migrant kids in cages during her tenure with the Trump administration," said Frisch, "Nielsen's ability to offer 'practical advice' to attendees at this conference is questionable at best."
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'No Soft Landing': Former DHS Head Kirstjen Nielsen Leaves Atlantic Ideas Festival Stage After Outrage From Grassroots Movement
"She never should have been invited in the first place."
Sep 20, 2019
Grassroots outrage apparently led Kirstjen Nielson, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, to bow out of the Atlantic Ideas Festival Friday--but it's unlikely to represent more than a Phyrric victory over the mainstreaming of the President Donald Trump administration.
Critics pointed to Nielsen's oversight of the department's acceleration of Trump's war on immigrants, including the administration's family separation policy.
"No one from Trump's administration should get a soft landing to sanitize their actions while supporting and pushing forward a white nationalist, fascist agenda," advocacy group CREDO Action said in a statement.
The Atlantic announced on September 17 that Nielsen would join the festival, where she would be interviewed about "the Trump administration's immigration policy, which she implemented as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security."
The decision came under fire from progressives, who continued to criticize The Atlantic even after the company said on Twitter Friday that "Nielsen's team has let us know that she is no longer able to participate in the interview."
"Good--but she never should have been invited in the first place," wrote daily kos author Gabe Ortiz. "Nielsen's role in implementing the administration's inhumane family separation policy will be remembered as one of the darkest times in modern U.S. history."
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action agreed.
"Glad she's not getting this platform to rehabilitate her image, but she shouldn't have ever been invited," the group tweeted.
Voter advocacy group Voto Latino took aim at Nielsen, tweeting that the former secretary isn't going to be able to rewrite her history.
"Kirstjen Nielsen, you don't get to separate families, cause long-lasting trauma to our kids, and think you can walk away scot-free," said Voto Latino. "We will not forget the harm you've caused to our community. You don't get to rehabilitate your image."
Nielsen wasn't the only former Trump official back in the spotlight this week. On Monday, former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer appeared on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," leading a number of progressives and liberals alike to denounce the network. And former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski appeared in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, where he stonewalled Democratic representatives, likely in contempt of the House--and was rewarded with an appearance on CNN the next morning. That, too, came in for criticism.
CREDO, in its statement, said that anyone wishing to launder Trump officials is on notice.
"We will continue to lean on media conglomerates and other corporations to think twice about providing a platform to people who worked hand-in-hand with Trump to separate families, lock babies up in cages, and terrorize communities of color," the group said. "Public backlash will be swift and powerful for anyone who tries to help rehabilitate the reputations of Trump's top henchmen."
However, the odds are in the favor of former Trump officials.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Iraq War advocate David Frum is an editor at The Atlantic and a mainstay at MSNBC alongside fellow unapologetic Iraq War booster and Bush ally Bill Kristol. Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, which used homophobic panic over gay marriage and Islamophobic vitriol to win W. another term, is a political analyst for ABC. Former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace has a daily MSNBC show.
If the architects and boosters of the Bush administration can that easily reintegrate into American life, it's unlikely that Trump officials--to say nothing of Trump--will have any difficulty rejoining polite society after this administration is over.
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No Fairy Tale: The Trump Administration's Declaration of Inhuman Rights
What the child detentions at the border really tell us.
Jul 25, 2019
Lately, I've been thinking about the Grimm's fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Terrified by cruel conditions at home, the brother and sister flee, winding their way, hungry and scared, through unknown woods. There, they encounter an old woman who lures them in with promises of safety. Instead, she locks one of them in a cage and turns the other into a servant, as she prepares to devour them both.
Written in nineteenth-century Germany, it should resonate eerily in today's America. In place of Hansel and Gretel, we would, of course, have to focus on girls and boys by the hundreds fleeing cruelty and hunger in Central America, believing that they will find a better life in the United States, only to be thrown into cages by forces far more powerful and agents much crueler than that wicked old woman. In the story, there are no politics; there is only good and bad, right and wrong.
Rather than, as in that fairy tale, register the suffering involved in the captivity and punishment of those children at the U.S.-Mexican border, the administration has chosen a full-bore defense of its policies and so has taken a giant step in a larger mission: redefining (or more precisely trying to abolish) the very idea of human rights as a part of the country's identity.
This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left no doubt: the reality of those children locked in cages, deprived of the most basic needs, and brazenly abused by the administration he works for has been an essential part of the Trump team's determination to abandon human rights more generally. That willingness to leave children unprotected is part of a far larger message, not merely an unfortunate byproduct of ill-thought out and clumsy actions by an overwhelmed border police force.
Children in Detention Camps
The story of the children at the border is indeed gruesome. The United States has long had migrants pushing at its southern border, often in larger numbers than at present. In fact, since the 1980s, the numbers crossing that border exceeded one million in 19 different years. While the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to estimate that current immigration rates are on track to exceed one million by September, many other experts don't think it will even happen this year.
What's genuinely new with the current border crossings is the number of children among the migrants. According to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan's sobering recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the presence of such children has risen 72% in recent years. Some even come "unaccompanied." Others belong to migrant families. And while last month the government officially stopped its cruel policy of separating families, leaving many of those children (even toddlers and babies) alone in custody, Vox reports that "at any given time, for the past several weeks, more than 2,000 children have been held in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol without their parents."
The conditions in the camps, strewn along the U.S. borderlands from Arizona to Texas, are shameful and fall most harshly on those very children. A recent Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report, issued in redacted form just days before the July 4th holiday celebrating the birth of this country as a beacon of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," described the staggering squalor and danger at such confinement facilities. There, children were often deprived of changes of clothes, beds, hot meals, toothbrushes, soap, showers, even adequate medical attention. Other eyewitness accounts have provided graphic details on the nature and scale of the deprivation, showing us children in soiled diapers, living with the stench of urine, sleeping on concrete floors, many weeping. On the somewhat more civilized floor of the Senate, members were told of children sleeping outside, exposed to the elements, and of the spoiled food at the camps.
Add to this the emotional toll that family separations have wrought on thousands of young people, as a new report issued by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee reveals and as others have documented. An El Paso immigration lawyer visiting one facility, for instance, described seeing a young boy who had scratched his own face until it bled. There are first-hand accounts by visitors to the camps of children trying to choke themselves with the lanyards from their own identification cards and others who dreamed about escaping by jumping out of windows high above the ground.
No wonder at least seven children have died while in such circumstances and many more are suffering from lice, scabies, chickenpox and other afflictions. Yet when doctors from the American Association of Pediatricians traveled to the camps to offer their help, their services were refused. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, herself a pediatrician, has labeled the situation of the migrants "appalling" and noted that "several U.N. human rights bodies have found that the detention of migrant children may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that is prohibited by international law." Others have been less circumspect, explicitly comparing the treatment of the children to torture.
It's hard not to assume that, however overwhelmed CBP may be, at least some of this treatment is intentional. Why else turn away doctors offering help or refuse supplies of donated aid sent by worried citizens? Why arrest a humanitarian aid volunteer who gave food and water to two ill and desperate undocumented Central American migrants and tried to get them medical help? The administration acknowledges that the overall situation is dire, but its officials on the spot have basically thrown up their hands, complaining that they have been "overwhelmed" by the situation they created, are "not trained to separate children," and are powerless to address the problem of scarce resources.
While those on the ground have claimed helplessness in the face of the challenge, the rest of the administration refuses even to admit to the appalling conditions. ("They are run beautifully," said President Trump of the border facilities, blaming the Democrats for any problems there.) Instead, top officials have repeatedly called the disgracefully unacceptable acceptable. Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who bore responsibility for creating much of the mess, assured Congress that the children were "well taken care of," claiming that "we have the highest standards." Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions echoed her words. "The children," he insisted, "are well cared for. In fact, they get better care than a lot of American kids do."
In court, Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian refused to admit that the absence of soap, a toothbrush, a bed, and sleep constituted unsafe and unsanitary conditions, the legal standards applying to the detention of migrant children. The U.S. Border Patrol chief for the El Paso region callously remarked, "Twenty years ago, we were lucky if we had juice and crackers for those in custody. Now, our stations are looking more like Walmarts, with diapers and baby formula and all kinds of things, like food and snacks." Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the refusal to acknowledge reality recently by calling the two camps he visited, neither solely for children, but one housing families, examples of "compassionate care... care that every American would be proud of."
Really? In whose world are filth, disease, and persistent emotional cruelty acceptable? In what America is the brutal incarceration of children not a violation of founding principles? In what America is rejecting the advances in protections that have been a hallmark of U.S. and international policy since the Second World War standard operating procedure? Since when do American officials just throw up their hands and declare defeat (as a kind of victory of cruelty) rather than muster their best talents, energies, and resources to confront such a problem? The answer, of course, is in Donald Trump's America. And don't for a moment think that this is just a matter of the piling up of unintended consequences. It's not.
A Declaration of Inhuman Rights
Recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered some insights into the mindset of such an administration when it comes to the country's longstanding embrace of the very idea of human rights. Soon after July 4th, he announced the creation of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department. Its purpose, he claimed, was to rethink the spread of human rights protections as a part of American foreign policy. The very idea of rights, Pompeo insisted, had spun out of control. "Human-rights advocacy has lost its bearings and become more of an industry than a moral compass," he said, wagging his finger at 70 years of history. "'Rights talk' has become a constant element of our domestic political discourse, without any serious effort to distinguish what rights mean and where they come from."
Rather than expand rights further, he explained, the country would do well to return to (his idea of) the context of the founding fathers and explore just what they really meant in their classic writings. Essential to his goal, experts suggested, was rolling back abortion rights. A remarkable number of the commission members were, in fact, known for their anti-abortion positions and this should have surprised no one, since the State Department had already withdrawn all health assistance from international organizations that offer abortion counseling and care. In doing so, it expanded what, in prior Republican administrations, were more modest restrictions on abortion-related care. Striking as such a global anti-abortion-rights position might be, however, Pompeo's urge seems far grander. His goal is evidently to unilaterally reject the evolution of human rights that has prominently defined the country since the post-World War Two era, and that has been an essential piece of American democratic rhetoric since its founding.
To begin the process, Pompeo promptly misappropriated the very language of the Declaration of Independence to promote an agenda explicitly calling for the removal of rights. "My hope," he announced, "is that the Commission on Unalienable Rights will ground our understanding of human rights in a manner that will both inform and better protect essential freedoms--and underscore how central these ideas are not only to Americans, but to all of humanity." As the rest of his comments showed, he was invoking the freedom to deprive others, exclude others, and cause hardship for others. Placed alongside the border realities, it was a testament to the administration's determination to erase rights from the nation's identity. Putting a fine point on his goals, Pompeo added that, in his view, human rights and democracy were distinctly in opposition to each other. As he pungently put it, "Loose talk of 'rights' unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy."
Pompeo's attempt to recast the founders' intent in the context of today's cruelty may be the most full-throated articulation to date of what this administration has been up to. The ongoing mistreatment of children at the border, a story that has lasted for well over a year, suggests that the spirit of Pompeo's Declaration of Inhuman Rights has long been on the agenda. He had one thing right, however: those border camps do seem to belong to another place and time, one that preceded the U.N.'s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, another document he invoked, intending to reshape American adherence to it.
The New Status Quo
This is hardly the first time the Trump administration has revealed its cynicism over democracy. Redefining the very purpose of "liberal democracy," as I wrote more than a year ago, had been part of its mission since the beginning. In its first 18 months, the administration removed the language of democracy from the mission statements of many of its departments, including the phrase "nation of immigrants" from that of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Still, after two and a half years of reorienting the executive branch of government away from equal protection under the law, the equal right to vote, and a respect for the very idea of welcoming immigrants, Pompeo's "commission" may be the most brazen conceptual act yet when it comes to erasing the language of human rights from the country's identity.
It's in this still-developing context that the migrant children crisis should be understood. It should be seen as a graphic version of the insistence of this administration on changing the very meaning of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the modern age. For Pompeo (as for his president), the evolution of the country towards more rights for more people is nothing but a mark of shame. How far back would he take us? To before the Civil War?
No wonder, on learning each day's news from the border, it's easy to feel we've entered a dismal fairy tale from an age of ogres and witches, where the forces of evil and ill will have taken charge and the prospect of saving helpless children seems as irretrievably long gone as those crumbs eaten by the birds following Hansel and Gretel on their grim journey into the witch's lair. Attacking the most vulnerable among us--infants, toddlers, young children, teens--leaves little room for doubt. This administration is determined to undo the country's commitment to human rights and so change its identity in a way that should concern us all.
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Objections by Nielsen and Others to Trump Plan for Mass Arrests Were 'Logistical and Technical,' Report Shows, Not Moral or Ethical
"To be clear, the heads of DHS/ICE had no issue with the depravity of the plan, they just wanted it to be better organized."
May 14, 2019
In the weeks before they were fired, top officials in the Trump administration reportedly raised concerns about a White House plan to deport whole families in a proposed show of force against migrants in the country--not for ethical reasons, but because such a plan could raise logistical and technical difficulties.
Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Ronald Vitiello both found the administration's plan unworkable and stopped the plan due to what reporting from The Washington Post described as a "lack of preparation" and "the risk of public outrage and worries that it would divert resources from the border."
That cold approach and the lack of a moral problem with the proposal led writer John R. Stanton to comment that the real issue was that the backlash to the plan might hurt DHS and ICE plans for future attacks on migrants.
"Please get beyond the headline to the part where it says none of the DHS officials had any ethical concerns with this," said Stanton. "Nielsen et al were just worried it would hurt their other ghoulish plans for immigrants."
According to the Post, the operation would have targeted migrant families in 10 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
According to seven current and former Department of Homeland Security officials, the administration wanted to target the crush of families that had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border after the president's failed "zero tolerance" prosecution push in early 2018. The ultimate purpose, the officials said, was a show of force to send the message that the United States was going to get tough by swiftly moving to detain and deport recent immigrants -- including families with children.
"This administration's level of depravity has no bounds," said Latino advocacy organization Latino Victory.
The administration's initial plan for the deportation operation would have imprisoned 2,500 migrants--and the plan ultimately called for locking up upwards of 10,000 people. The plan was for a major, public, and aggressive push that would send a message.
Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence were especially supportive of the plan, officials said, eager to execute dramatic, highly visible mass arrests that they argued would help deter the soaring influx of families.
The plan remains under consideration.
Nielsen resigned last month, just days after the White House announced it was withdrawing Vitiello's nomination. Both dismissals, officials who spoke with the Post said, were at least in part because of their opposition to the plan.
Albence, the former ICE deputy director who was eager to implement the operation, succeeded Vitiello in April.
The report's explosive findings had liberals and progressives objecting Tuesday to both the proposal and what was seen as an attempt by Nielsen to rewrite her legacy and rehabilitate her public image.
"Screw this spin," said AV Club writer Dennis Perkins. "Secretary Nielsen is hell-bound for this hateful, racist bullshit and nothing will ever change that.
"There is nothing but evil here including Nielsen and Vitiello," immigration lawyer David Leopold said.
The heads of DHS and ICE just wanted the plan to be "better organized," said novelist Laila Lalami.
Sirius XM host Xorje Olivares was more blunt.
"This administration is fucking evil," said Olivares, "and you should care."
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Author of 'Crude' Op-ed Yanked from Boston Globe Defends Sarcastic Take on Unaccountable Trump Officials
"I don't understand what is so crazy about suggesting that the people responsible for ruining lives and tearing families apart and losing fucking track of children should be held somewhat accountable."
Apr 12, 2019
It was one of his favorite lines he ever wrote.
That's what Massachusetts freelance writer Luke O'Neil thought of the opening to an opinion piece he penned for The Boston Globe, published Wednesday night.
The op-ed began with O'Neil, who also writes the newsletter Hell World, expressing his regret over not urinating in Iraq War cheerleader Bill Kristol's salmon dinner when O'Neil waited on him a decade ago.
"One of the biggest regrets of my life is not pissing in Bill Kristol's salmon," wrote O'Neil.
"The idea that anyone would really go and piss in someone's food because Luke O'Neil the weird freelancer said to is fucking stupid. It's obviously just being crude for humorous effect." -- Luke O'Neil
In the article, O'Neil argued that former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen--who resigned earlier this week--should not be allowed to feel comfortable in polite society after her oversight of the Donald Trump administration's child separation policy and general war on immigrants. O'Neil also sarcastically implied that waiters should do to Nielsen's food what he didn't to Kristol's dish.
That triggered outrage from the right as Fox News, The Daily Caller, and other conservative media outlets and personalities attacked O'Neil and the Globe for the article.
The Globe took the article down Thursday and issued a strongly worded statement distancing the paper from O'Neil, noting that the writer was "not on staff."
"In the end, this piece did not meet Globe standards and we regret that it got posted," interim editorial director Shirley Leung told Boston public radio station WGBH Friday.
In an interview, O'Neil expressed frustration with the paper's decision and its treatment of him.
"I'm disappointed that the Globe threw me under the bus and took the almost never done step of deleting an article entirely, all because the 'civility police' complained about it," O'Neil told Common Dreams.
In a tweet Thursday, O'Neil announced he would no longer write for the paper.
Fellow journalists were outraged at the paper's decision to pull the piece and leave O'Neil twisting in the wind.
"As a former restaurant industry tech employee, I need to tell you: Nielsen deserves only gruel," said writer Dan O'Sullivan.
Judd Legum traced the attacks on O'Neil back to O'Neil's recent writing about the poisoning of the mind done by Fox News.
"It's easy to throw a writer, *especially* a freelance writer, under the bus for an opinion that doesn't land," said film critic Scott Tobias. "But it shows zero accountability."
O'Neil told Common Dreams that the reaction to the piece left him a bit bemused--especially given the behavior of Nielsen during her time in the Trump administration.
"I don't understand what is so crazy about suggesting that the people responsible for ruining lives and tearing families apart and losing fucking track of children should be held somewhat accountable," O'Neil said.
That doesn't necessarily mean taking the step of relieving oneself into a plate of gravlax. In fact, O'Neil rejects the idea that his sarcastic comments in the piece were directed at inciting food service workers to take those steps.
"The idea that anyone would really go and piss in someone's food because Luke O'Neil the weird freelancer said to is fucking stupid," said O'Neil. "It's obviously just being crude for humorous effect."
But, the writer added, he isn't saying that people like Nielsen should be given a free ride.
"I do think, however, that they should be made uncomfortable in public," O'Neil said.
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In Trump's America, Even Nielsen Wasn't Cruel Enough
We cannot allow Trump’s slippery slope into hell to distort our moral compasses
Apr 12, 2019
Kirstjen Nielsen's cruelty toward immigrants over the past year was apparently not enough for President Donald Trump. Nielsen, the Department of Homeland Security secretary who resigned under pressure Monday after holding her position for just over a year, left behind a legacy stained by the forced separation of thousands of migrant families. Under her watch at least 2,654 children were removed from their parents' care.
What's worse, Nielsen refused to acknowledge the reality of what she had done. After protesters confronted her with cries of "shame" at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C., she tweeted that she would "work tirelessly until our broken immigration system is fixed, our borders are secure and families can stay together," as if circumstances beyond her control were forcing her to take children away from their loved ones and all she was interested in was helping immigrant families. She repeatedly denied that DHS was separating families, saying, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period."
After an audiotape of a child crying for her parents was released to the public last summer, Nielsen claimed no knowledge of it. And when reporters asked her whether she wanted the U.S. to be known by images of kids in cages, she again shamelessly responded, "The image I want of this country is an immigration system that secures our border and upholds our humanitarian ideals."
Earlier this year, she insisted to lawmakers that the chain link boxes used to hold immigrant children in border facilities were "not cages," but instead were "areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they're being processed." And even after the president, whose vision she claimed to be fulfilling, threw her under the bus on Sunday, Nielsen refused to show any remorse or regret for carrying out his cruel agenda, saying instead, "I share the president's goal of securing the border." Rather than expressing even a hint of a "mea culpa" for the monstrous role she has played in enacting Trump's cruel agenda, Nielsen has shown herself to be coldly up to the task, embracing the inhumanity with open arms.
While she was willing imprison kids for her president, it is now apparent that Nielsen was not willing to fall on her sword and flout immigration laws for him, which is likely why she was forced to resign. According to CNN, sources revealed that Trump was "ranting and raving, saying border security was his issue," and demanded that Nielsen shut down the El Paso, Texas, port of entry. When she explained that was not possible, he demanded that the U.S. disallow refugees from entering to request asylum--in violation of asylum laws. Again, Nielsen refused--not necessarily because she wanted to (though it is abundantly clear how morally bankrupt she is) but perhaps because Trump wants to break our asylum laws, and she may have been unwilling to be his accomplice.
Apparently angry that migrants fleeing violence and insecurity from Central America continue to ask for asylum in the U.S., Trump is considering reinstating the disastrous family separation policy--a practice that Nielsen repeatedly insisted was not government policy and that Trump finally ended via executive order last year after a massive public outcry. CNN reported that in recent weeks, "The President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers." This goes beyond what Trump did last summer. "He just wants to separate families," a senior administration official told CNN.
When asked this week if he would reinstate the policy, Trump initially denied it, saying, "We're not looking to do that, no," but went on to boast about the success of family separation as a deterrent to immigration. "Once you don't have it, that's why you see many more people coming. They're coming like it's a picnic because, 'let's go to Disneyland,' " he said.
If Nielsen's role in the mass kidnapping of vulnerable children, her calculating lies and euphemistic defenses of Trump's anti-immigrant agenda are the worst this country has witnessed in recent years, what's coming next is likely a step beyond even her barbarity.
So, what is driving Trump's latest anti-immigrant phase? One White House source told CBS that Nielsen's departure "is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller." Miller has developed a reputation for pushing a strongly white supremacist, nationalist and anti-immigrant agenda at the White House, all the more ironic because his ancestors benefited from asylum laws in order to emigrate to the U.S. in the early 1900s. After Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, also a beneficiary of asylum laws, rightly called Miller out for being a white nationalist, the president's son Donald Jr. unabashedly accused her of "anti-Semitic bigotry"--because Miller is Jewish.
But Miller alone is not to blame for the current mess we're in. Trump has shown his true racist colors so often that his virulent hatred of brown-skinned immigrants should no longer be in question. While Miller may supply Trump with a strategy of how best to slam the door shut on migrants, Trump well knows that his deeply loyal base is moved primarily by insecurity steeped in a fear of immigrants. He knows that the crueler he is to immigrants, the more assured his path to reelection is. He understands that even when he spews such lies as "The country is full," his base nods along obediently. Even when his own business is found to rely on undocumented immigrants, his backers will be blind to his hypocrisy.
Over the past two years, much of the president's anti-immigrant policy has faced opposition from the public and the courts. This means that Trump is likely to dig in his heels ever harder and do everything in his power to steamroll over the Constitution until he's stopped. If Nielsen's role in the mass kidnapping of vulnerable children, her calculating lies and euphemistic defenses of Trump's anti-immigrant agenda are the worst this country has witnessed in recent years, what's coming next is likely a step beyond even her barbarity.
Still, there are such things as laws, and even Trump's fascistic destruction of norms, ethical boundaries and laws cannot mow down all checks and balances. A federal judge on Monday blocked Trump's policy of forcing asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while they apply. Judge Jon S. Tigar of San Francisco wrote, "Whatever the scope of the President's authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden."
More importantly, his own party was perfectly happy with Nielsen's savagery and seems to have an appetite to do her one better. Top ranking Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday warned the White House not to fire more DHS agency heads. In an interview with The Washington Post, Grassley said he was, "very, very concerned" about rumors that Lee Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, would be the next to be fired. He told the paper, "One, those are good public servants. ... Secondly, besides the personal connection I have with them and the qualifications they have, they are the intellectual basis for what the president wants to accomplish in immigration." In other words, why isn't Trump satisfied with Nielsen's brutality, wonders Grassley?
Still, the purge has continued with Trump firing the head of the Secret Service (perhaps in retaliation for their tiff with Mar-a-Lago staff?) and the announced resignation of DHS' acting Deputy Secretary, Claire Grady. Eventually, Trump will find shills willing to carry out his nefarious fantasy of barring all immigrants from the nation. When that happens, let us not look back on Nielsen's tenure with nostalgia. We cannot allow Trump's slippery slope into hell to distort our moral compasses.
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Kirstjen Nielsen's Brutal and Calamitous Leadership of the Department of Homeland Security Comes to an End
All in all, Nielsen’s legacy as an apologist and enabler of Trump’s detention and deportation machine will go down in history as one of the crucial—and cruel—moments of this presidency
Apr 09, 2019
Late Sunday, President Trump announced that Kirstjen Nielsen has resigned as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Trump said that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will serve as Acting Secretary.
Nielsen's tenure as head of one of the country's largest government agencies was a humanitarian catastrophe, consistently showing a clear disregard for civil rights and people's lives. Indeed, just over a week prior to her resignation, CBP agents forced asylum-seekers to sleep outside beneath a bridge in El Paso in extremely low temperatures and deprived of medical care.
Implemented family separation and expanded immigration detention
The most infamous chapter in Nielsen's time at DHS was her implementation of an unfathomably cruel family separation policy. The administration tore thousands of children from their parents -- without even keeping track of many of the families it separated -- in an effort to punish and deter families who were lawfully seeking asylum in the United States. McAleenan, Nielsen's acting replacement, signed a memo recommending the policy.
Nielsen's imposition of the family separation policy was a humanitarian and legal disaster that was ultimately curtailed by an ACLU lawsuit and immense public outcry.
Nielsen's imposition of the family separation policy was a humanitarian and legal disaster that was ultimately curtailed by an ACLU lawsuit and immense public outcry. But even after the administration formally ended the policy, Nielsen continued to shamelessly lie about it, going so far as to deny that the policy ever existed. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) asked the FBI to investigate whether Nielsen committed perjury when she testified to Congress that "we've never had a policy for family separation."
A DHS inspector general report found that the department failed to track the children they separated from their parents, and DHS used information from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to arrest and deport sponsors and potential sponsors of the detained children. And yet, the separation of families at the border continues.
The detention and separation of families was part of a broad attack on asylum-seekers and immigrants generally under Nielsen.
She presided over a huge expansion in immigration detention. The number of people in DHS custody skyrocketed during her tenure, reaching 50,000 on average per day in March. Since the department's detention spending soared past the already bloated-budget approved by Congress, DHS had to funnel dollars from other agencies, including FEMA funds meant for disaster relief, in order to cover the costs of jailing immigrants in facilities notorious for substandard medical care, abusive practices, and violations of people's constitutional rights.
Restricted asylum and protections for immigrants
She attempted to curtail asylum protections in numerous unlawful ways. For example, she ordered that people who had entered the country in between official points of entry were not eligible for asylum, even though United States law provides precisely the opposite. In November, the ACLU and partners won an initial ruling preventing the asylum ban from going into effect.
She also terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nepal and failed to redesignate TPS for those from Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, despite the fact that violence and natural disasters have displaced tens of thousands of people in their home countries. While she was serving in the administration but prior to her time as DHS Secretary, Trump also announced the termination of TPS for people from Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan. The ACLU of Southern California and partners obtained a ruling in October blocking the termination of TPS for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan, citing "serious questions as to whether a discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor" in their decisions.
After Trump reportedly made racist comments regarding immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, and African nations, and instead wanted to prioritize immigrants from Norway, Nielsen denied to Congress that the president used the word, but explained that he "was using tough language." She also denied that his remarks were racist, bizarrely insisting that she herself didn't know that Norway was a predominantly white country.
Nielsen also was in charge of implementing Trump's Muslim ban--she was confirmed to her post one day after the Supreme Court allowed the third version of the ban to take full effect--and served as Chief of Staff to former DHS Secretary John Kelly during the implementation of the first and second versions of the Muslim ban.
Nielsen also championed the attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), issuing a memo purporting to justify the administration's decision to end the program, which provides protections for certain young immigrants, but was rebuffed by a federal court.
Paved the way to build Trump's wall and expanded warrantless searches at the border
When Trump shut down the government for weeks in order to secure billions of more dollars to build his border wall, Nielsen was consistently at his side and parroting his false talking points. Even before the shutdown, Nielsen helped build Trump's wall by waiving federal, state, local, and tribal laws and undermining border communities in order to accelerate its construction, and afterwards championed the president's bogus "national emergency" declaration to build the wall, an unconstitutional order that the ACLU has challenged in court. The border wall would increase the number of deaths among migrants as they are "funneled" to harsher domains.
Along the border, the number of warrantless searches of electronic devices, such as cellphones and laptops, by CBP agents increased under the Trump administration. While Nielsen did not start the policy of warrantless searches, she defended DHS's practices that violate people's Fourth Amendment rights--practices that the ACLU, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation--is challenging in a groundbreaking lawsuit. Under Nielsen's leadership, social media "vetting" expanded dramatically, despite concerns about unfairly targeting Muslim immigrants and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, and expanding to all immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applicants.
Nielsen's disastrous and unlawful policies could fill a book, and this is only a summary of some of her most egregious actions, which extend to tear-gassing toddlers and being in charge while two children died in Border Patrol custody.
Her resignation comes only days after Trump withdrew his nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying that he wants "tougher" people to carry out his anti-immigrant policies. Seeing as Nielsen was one of Trump's most brutal cabinet secretaries, this does not bode well for the president's permanent replacement.
All in all, Nielsen's legacy as an apologist and enabler of Trump's detention and deportation machine will go down in history as one of the crucial--and cruel--moments of this presidency.
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With Nielsen Out and Stephen Miller Driving Immigration Policy, Critics Fear 'The Worst Is Yet to Come'
"Now this president wants someone even 'tougher.' This should be a warning to all who believe in justice," says Rep. Ilhan Omar
Apr 08, 2019
"The worst is yet to come."
So wrote Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce on Monday following the ouster of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen--and as signs that senior White House adviser and xenophobe Stephen Miller is exerting more control over immigration policy.
As Common Dreams reported, President Trump announced Sunday that Nielsen would be leaving her position. During her time as Homeland Security secretary, she oversaw widely condemned policies including the forcible separation of families and the caging of children at the southern border.
Commenting on her tenure, the ACLU tweeted Sunday: "From the family separation crisis she created and defended, to restricting immigrants' rights to seek asylum, to relentless and pointless efforts to build Trump's border wall, Nielsen's department served as the key to Trump's unconstitutional and anti-immigrant agenda of fear."
With such a record, progressive lawmakers like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) welcomed her departure.
"Nielsen will go down in history as presiding over an exceptionally cruel regime that separated families and violated human rights," Jayapal said. "I welcome her resignation and believe she should be held accountable for the abuses that happened under her watch."
At the same time, reports that the Trump team is reportedly eyeing a successor with an even more hard-line approach to immigration triggered alarm.
"When even the most radical voices in the administration aren't radical enough for President Trump," said Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, "you know he's completely lost touch with the American people."
As the New York Times editorial board wrote,
It's no secret that Mr. Trump had a problem with Ms. Nielsen, whom he considered "weak" on matters of border security. The president and Stephen Miller, his hard-line immigration adviser, have long grumbled privately about the secretary's insufficiently brutal approach to the surge in migrant families across the border. Last May, stories surfaced about Mr. Trump publicly berating her in front of the entire cabinet for failing to stop the crossings.
CNN also reported:
A source familiar with Nielsen's thinking told CNN Nielsen is taking this as a relief. Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable" with Trump "becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests," a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.
One such request that proved to be a point of contention, according to new reporting by NBC News, was over Trump's desire to reinstate the policy of family separations. The outlet reported:
According to two of the sources, Nielsen told Trump that federal court orders prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from reinstating the policy, and that he would be reversing his own executive order from June that ended family separations.
That wasn't the only apparent roadblock. From the Times:
The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements, and international obligations.
A likely force behind such impossible requests was Miller. In a separate story, CNN reported that Miller "played key a role in Nielsen's ouster," and his "heightened influence within the West Wing has been aided by the president, who recently told aides in an Oval Office meeting that Miller was in charge of all immigration and border related issues in the White House, according to a person familiar with the meeting."
Given this backdrop, Pierce concluded:
[I]t is something of a national crisis that even as loyal an apparatchik as Nielsen wasn't cruel enough to suit this administration*, which, in a tragic misallocation of resources, cages children and not Stephen Miller. But this is the administration* she had chosen, and nothing more becomes her public service than her leaving of it. The worst is yet to come.
Nielsen may be just one of the people Miller has targeted for ousting. According to Politico, the White House adviser has been "telephoning mid-level officials at several federal departments and agencies to angrily demand that they do more to stem the flow of immigrants into the country, according to two people familiar with the calls," the outlet reported.
Miller was also behind withdrawal of the nomination of acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Ronald Vitiello to lead ICE--a move taken so that the White House could take the agency in a "tougher direction," Politico reported.
As for Nielsen's job, Trump announced that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would serve as acting DHS secretary. With one senior DHS official saying McAleenan is "not an ideologue or fire breather" on immigration and Miller now formally holding the reigns on the matter, however, it's unclear how long he'll stay in the role.
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