Kris Kobach Applying For Ralph Fiennes's Job In That One Movie, What Was It, 'Bucket List'

We're not terrified, you're terrified!

Kris Kobach -- the former Kansas secretary of state and 2018 Republican gubernatorial nominee who lost to a DEMOCRAT GIRL, in KANSAS -- went on Fox Business's "Lou Dobbs 60-Minute Hate" last night. There, he unveiled his simple three-step plan to end the "crisis" the Trump administration has created at the US-Mexico border. We'll assume the appearance was Kobach's job interview for the new position of "Border Czar" or "Immigration Czar" or "Obersturmbannführer" that Donald Trump is considering creating, to coordinate Trump's Deport Everyone policy across the several agencies that handle immigration. It's a terrific plan, involving the creation of "camps" at the border to "process" all the families seeking asylum.

Here, Media Matters has the video:

Kobach explained, "Lou, the solution to this crisis is actually a fairly easy one. I won't say 'easy,' but it has three major steps." Happily, Kobach didn't say the solution would be final, just fairly easy, but not really easy after all. His first step, he said, would be to put in place the Trump administration's bullshit administrative "rule" -- proposed last fall but never actually published in the Federal Register to make it law -- that would vacate the Flores settlement. That's the 1997 court case, and subsequent findings, prohibiting the detention of minors over 20 days and mandating they be kept in the LEAST restrictive setting possible. Once that simple step was out of the way (Narrator: "It would be challenged in court for years"), we get to the really cool part of Kobach's Lock 'Em Up fantasy, where he'd set up the CAMPS, filled with leftover FEMA trailers that the government already owns.

Number two, and this is deploy dozens of immigration judges as well as a fleet of passenger planes, and the thousands of empty mobile home trailers that the United States owns right now and is attempting to sell at bargain prices on the internet.

Instead of selling them, deploy them to the border cities, and create processing towns that are confined, and so when someone comes in and falsely claims asylum, we don't release them for six months onto the streets of the United States.

Processing towns that are confined! Where everyone can be kept, sort of concentrated-like! And heck, there's also plenty of brand new barbed wire already down there at the border, and we'd better put it to use before the Messicans all steal it! Just think how great that will be, and this time we'll ban cameras to make sure there are no iconic/ironic photos of little kids being led in the Pledge of Allegiance with rolls of razor wire in the background. Or anything like this:

We've learned somelessons, after all! (Besides, technically, those kids in the 1942 photo from the "U.S. War Relocation Authority" hadn't yet been interned, so there is nothing to object to anyway.)

Anyway, all these "Processing Towns" would prevent the very exaggerated "threat" of people being given a date for asylum hearings and then vanishing, which for the most part they don't actually do anyway , because after all they're very motivated to show up and get the chance to make their case.

Kobach went on to explain how the camps would result in quick processing and disposal of all the fakers who fake their asylum claims, since there are no real problems in Central America we suppose.

We process them right there, in that camp, where they have the three square meals, they're living in a nice mobile home, and then as soon as they're done, as soon as the claim is rejected, they're on the next plane back home, and then the people back home suddenly realize 'Hey he just left here two weeks ago, and yet he's back, maybe going in these caravans isn't such a great deal anymore.' So let's process the claims right there at the border and not release these people into the United States where they just disappear.

We particularly like the part where Kobach fantasizes that the immigration court backlog could be cut from over two years to just "two weeks," if only we imprisoned more people. Maybe we'll also get rid of due process, or at least get rid of a lot of judges who think it even applies to people who don't deserve it, as Donald Trump explained yesterday to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

TRUMP threatens to close border with Mexico as soon as this weekend, then rants about immigration during Oval Offic… https: //t.co/fsd1WWDCEo

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1554230263.0 

"We have to get rid of judges," huh? That's a hot take, and heavens no, he's certainly not saying that in a "won't someone please rid me of these awful judges" way, at least not if some nut with a gun finds it inspiring. Also, pfft, since when do lawbreakers have "rights" to "due process"? Everyone knows that "rights" are for good decent people like Paul Manafort, not for invaders.

We were looking forward to hearing what the third step of Kobach's plan was, but Dobbs decided "part three" was the thing about saving the government money by bringing "all of that unused government property to use, effectively and at very little cost, if not no cost, in fact, to the Department of Homeland Security," and that was that. Hold on, wasn't that the second step, too?

In other news, Kobach would like you to hear about this new idea he has for making use of the US's Cold War supply of nerve gas, which we're currently just destroying in furnaces at great cost to the government. He saw a cool documentary about it on Amazon, you see...

[ MMFA / Vox / CBS News ]

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