In a move that seems not entirely unlike the kind of solution one would give in a psychological assessment designed to determine whether or not they are a sociopath, the Department of Justice this week announced a new and disturbingly cruel plan meant to take advantage of the fact that Democrats tend to care whether or not poor people live or die or starve in order to force them to turn their undocumented immigrants over to the Department of Homeland Security.
Specifically, the DOJ has issued a new opinion announcing that states that refuse to report all of their known undocumented immigrants to the DHS so they can round them up, tear them from their families, and send them off to random countries where they don’t know anyone and have never been will no longer receive funding for their Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs.
Why? Because they’re just horrible people who hate poor people and don’t care if they live or die or starve.
This seems a lot like something they should not be able to do, but in 1998, the DOJ determined that the term “state” in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 — that’s Clinton’s “welfare reform” — was not meant to be interpreted broadly, but rather very specifically, and the DOJ now is claiming that this was an error and that it was meant to be interpreted broadly. Good enough for government work!
Via CNBC:
“Congress wrote this requirement plainly,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, said in a statement.
“When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” Gaiser said. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”
The DOJ in a statement Wednesday said the Office of Legal Counsel’s Sept. 1 opinion “explains that Congress defined ‘State’ broadly in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.”
“As a result, when a state accepts federal TANF or SSI funds, the entire state government — including all component agencies — is bound by federal law to share information with DHS about individuals the state knows to be not lawfully present,” the DOJ said.
Well, at the very least, by passing the PRWORA, Bill Clinton did such a good job at appeasing Republicans and validating their worldview that they decided to not be horrible to him at all for the rest of his time in office. Total smooth sailing for the Clinton administration, post-1996!
Craddock claims that they aren’t doing anything new, even though they are, they are just giving DHS what they have always been owed.
“Our clarification does not impose new obligations on states,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock, the Office of Legal Counsel official who wrote the new opinion.
“It simply restores the original meaning of the statute Congress enacted and ensures that DHS receives the information it is legally entitled to,” Craddock said.
Huh! Well, there are still a lot of people in Congress who were serving during the 1990s, so perhaps he should ask some of them whether or not they meant it to be interpreted broadly or not? I mean, not Mitch McConnell, as he is probably dead, but some others could probably help them out. One would have to imagine that, were this not what they meant, they would have said something when the DOJ issued that opinion two years later.
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So far, there hasn’t been much of a response from blue states. California state Attorney General Rob Bonta said, “We’re evaluating the OLC opinion and have nothing further to share at this time,” and New York state AG Letitia James is also in the reviewing process.
Now, I’m not an expert on this, but it does seem like it places an incredibly high burden on the states, and will involve a lot of work on their part. Work that even red states may not care to do, and certainly those states will not be too motivated by the threat of harm to the poor. Hell, they might even consider that a bonus.
Using the threat of harm to one vulnerable population in order to “get” to harm another is perhaps one of the most Trumpian things that has happened in the last few years, and that’s saying a lot. If this isn’t blocked somehow, it’s going to hurt a whole lot of people, both directly and indirectly, and it may very well end up biting them in the ass in the end (we hope, while also hoping that this never comes to pass).
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Miasma, Pestilence, Calamity, and Destitution...the Republican Way!
Take a bow, millions of Bigot-Americans. You are indeed the baddies for bringing this unreconstructed death cult of a party into power. And for a fair number of you, this will be a spectacular self-own.
Dear DOJ,
This letter is to inform you that some asshole has stolen your letterhead.
V/r,
Rufus T. Superfly
President, Most Serene Republic of Funkadonia