As the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has intensified, one of the many questions surrounding the aggressive agenda is just how many U.S. citizens have been caught up in it.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the answer is zero. The Chicago Sun Times reported:
Despite evidence to the contrary, Noem … said, ‘There’s no American citizens that have been arrested or detained. We focus on those that are here illegally. And anything that you would hear or report that would be different than that is simply not true.’
After making the comments, the South Dakota Republican promptly ended the event, allowing for no follow-up questions.
Taken at face value, Noem’s comments might’ve appeared encouraging to those who don’t know better. If it were true that federal agents have targeted immigrants without detaining a single American citizen, that would be a welcome surprise.
Unfortunately for the Cabinet secretary, there’s ample evidence to suggest she was lying.
The New York Times recently reported, for example, that “many” U.S. citizens have been taken into custody. “While many of those detained have immediately declared their U.S. citizenship to officers, they have routinely been ignored,” the newspaper said. The Times added, “In some cases they have been handcuffed, kept in holding cells and immigration facilities overnight, and in at least two cases held without access to a lawyer or even a phone call.”
But how many is “many”? ProPublica tried to document the scope of the problem:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched. About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
According to the ProPublica tally published two weeks ago (which has not been independently verified by MSNBC), more than 170 American citizens had been held against their will because federal agents, acting at Donald Trump’s behest, suspected them of being undocumented immigrants.
“Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer,” the report added, while acknowledging that this tally “is almost certainly incomplete.”
A week later, The Washington Post’s George Will, a longtime conservative, devoted a column to George Retes, a U.S. citizen and disabled combat veteran who was abused by ICE agents and detained for three days without access to an attorney.
And yet, there was Noem, speaking at a public event, assuring Americans that “no” U.S. citizens have been “arrested or detained” by federal immigration agents in what some critics refer to as “Kavanaugh stops.”
The Trump administration doesn’t have a reputation for honesty, but some lies are so brazen that they’d be seen as career-ending controversies under normal political circumstances.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
