Would Have Been Cool If Senate Dems Sassed Back At The Mass Deportation Hearing Bullsh*ts
Misrepresenting, demeaning, grandstanding, you know the drill!
How about that Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on mass deportations?
We wrote a play-by-play, but it ended up being like 3,000 words long, so how about instead we trim it into the top ICYMI moments and most egregious lies and omissions!
Starting with:
Lindsey Graham making shit up
If you want to watch the whole hearing, you can rewind there, but let’s start with drawling lickspittle Lindsay Graham getting a Tony Award at playing ignorant!
“In January of 2025, the Republican Senate will make its top priority a transformational border security bill that will be taken up and passed by the Budget Committee, increasing the number of bed spaces available to detain people instead of releasing them, increasing the number of ICE agents to deal with people who should be deported, finish the wall and put […] technology on the border, so we’ll have operational control of the border. That’s going to be our top priority.”
Oh, so you mean exactly like that border bill that everybody liked until a certain con man demanded it be killed because it would hurt him politically, plus a wall? And didn’t that guy already have four years to build the wall and make Mexico pay for it?
“I want to cut taxes. We will cut taxes. But as to the Senate, transformational border security goes first.”
Kids, I want to take you to Disney World. And I will take you to Disney World. But buying 1,000 Jim Bakker survivalist food buckets and a shack full of shotguns to prepare for the End Times comes first!
He went on: Biden paroled people, he murdered Laken Riley practically with his bare hands, and Dreamers, well, maybe we’ll find a solution for them.
Graham then pulled out a real plum of a completely made-up number: “Eighty-six percent of people deported under Trump had criminal convictions.” The real number is less than 0.5 percent. Trump, in fact, released nearly 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records into the country, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers, because he de-prioritized finding criminals to focus on going after asylum seekers and caging kids instead, which led to a threefold increase in criminal crossings. Trump’s use of Title 42 weakened vetting procedures in favor of kicking everybody back out to Mexico, and did not prosecute people for multiple attempted entries.
Mass deportation is the exact opposite of targeted deportation of criminals. According to the Cato Institute, “in 2019, Trump’s ICE released more than twice the number of individuals convicted of crimes compared to any year during Biden’s presidency.”
Would anyone call Graham out on this horse-hockey? No, they would not. Though Senator Alex Padilla of California did point out the contradiction there: So are we going to find a solution for Dreamers, or are we going to mass-deport everybody? Which is it? Also that shit will be expensive! People voted for deportations but also cheap groceries, and you can’t have both. If you’re worried about groceries, hoo boy. Fifteen percent of construction workers, half of food workers, and our annual GDP will be tits-up, you morons. Do you like food? Grab your ankles! Many are essential workers, what part of essential don’t you understand? And they also spend money and pay taxes, dumbass.
Retired Major General Randy Manner, with some harsh truths
Trump’s idea to use the military to round people up is dumbshit, and retired General Randy Manner was there to lay out all the ways why. The military is trained to pew pew pew in foreign countries in a war, not go door-to-door pulling abuelas out of their beds and caging toddlers. They don’t know shit about immigration law, or civil rights law, because that’s not their job. Do you want a bunch of deadly mistakes? Well, that’s how you get them.
And, there’s already a recruitment issue in the military, are the young folks going to be eager to sign up for the job of kicking down their neighbors’ doors? Also, the military is in 160 countries (!) around the world, and busy keeping its eye on Russia and China and such. What are we gonna do if there’s a crisis overseas and the soldiers over here are too busy arresting their former classmates, dishwashers at the diner, or DACA recipients at their doctor and lawyer jobs? The public will hate them, and they’ll end up hating themselves, too. Sounds shitty, man.
And all that made cajun-fried chucklefuck Senator John Kennedy crawdaddy-biting mad!
He did not like General Manner and his reality check, no siree!
“You’re angry that Donald Trump doesn’t believe in open borders, aren’t you!” he foot-stomped to General Manner.
“I’m not here to discuss policy,” replied Manner.
“And it makes you angry that most Americans don’t believe in open borders, doesn’t it?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Kennedy was double-dog mad that Manner had gone on CNN and said Trump was not like any sane leader, and he was proud of General Milley for calling Trump a fascist, and calling Republicans fascists.
“You think you’re smarter than the American people, dontcha. […] You think you’re more virtuous than the American people.”
“Senator, I am insulted by your comment.”
Then Kennedy turned his ire to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“You believe in open borders too, dontcha!”
“I do not,” Reichlin-Melnick replied. Kennedy was also jowl-shaking mad that Reichlin-Melnick tweeted two years ago, “Both Texas and Louisiana have their knives out for Black immigrants. Once Haitians stopped crossing irregularly, it's so telling that the plaintiffs once again demand that a federal court wield Title 42 against Haitians to stop them from entering at ports of entry too.”
“Who in Texas had their ‘knives out’ for Black immigrants?” Kennedy demanded, but would not let Reichlin-Melnick answer and muttered like some kind of Jaqen H'ghar. “Give me a name. Give me a name. Give me a name.” Well, Ken Paxton, probably, said Reichlin-Melnick.
“Give me a name,” Kennedy scowled some more.
“I just did,” said Reichlin-Melnick.
“You don’t have a name, do you?”
“I just said Ken Paxton,”
“You don’t have a name, do you?”
“I just said Ken Paxton.”
Watch the whole cringe-fest if you want. Naturally this flamenco of stupid made headlines, instead of all of the excellent points that anybody else made about what a terrible idea on multiple levels that mass deportations would actually be.
Rachel Morin’s mom Patty
It is absolutely tragic that Rachel Morin was murdered and for sure that suspect from El Salvador never should have been here, or anywhere but a Salvadoran prison. He was able to cross over the border four times, even after being wanted for killing a woman in El Salvador, because Title 42 let him get away.
Title 42, aka the “Stephen Miller special,” was a CDC policy that was supposed to be about stopping the spread of COVID, and in reality detained asylum seekers, suspended vetting, and got rid of penalties for re-entry so that people who were turned down could return repeatedly to try again. After Biden was elected, he tried to end it, but Republican states sued to not let him, and the Supreme Court would not let him. Dok wrote about it a lot!
Patty Morin also seemed genuinely confused about easy-to-Google facts, claiming that 87 percent of people voted for Trump, and she seemed to genuinely believe it. She also insisted that crime is up in Maryland by 850 percent over the last four years (it is down in all categories by more than 15 percent). Again, nobody corrected this.
Some people who didn’t suck, and some who did!
Foday Turay, a DACA recipient, now a married father and an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, testified that he was born in Sierra Leone, came to the US when he was seven, and only discovered he was undocumented when he applied for a driver's license. DACA let him go to college and law school. What would happen to his son, and wife who is caring full-time for her cancer-stricken mother if he were to be deported? It would be heartbreaking.
“On a society level, mass deportation would be devastating,” he testified. “As a prosecutor, I know how delicate the ties between law enforcement and immigrants can be. If immigrants are afraid to cooperate with the police — or prosecutors like myself — because they're afraid of deportation, we all suffer.”
And Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council: “The president-elect's mass deportation plans would crash the American economy, break up families and take a hammer to the foundations of our society by deporting nearly four percent of the entire US population.” He noted that more than 90 percent of undocumented migrants have no criminal record, and that most are either in school or employed in sectors such as construction, restaurants and childcare
Then there was Art Arthur from the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, who said we have no idea what actual policies Trump will spin up, but yes, we’ve got a problem, no doubt. For sure people are mad, laws have been ignored, they’re taking our jerbs, and he quoted Bill Clinton, who mentioned something about cracking down on illegal hiring. Yes, funny how in all of this talk, nobody mentioned doing anything about the companies hiring undocumented immigrants at all. Sure would seem more efficient-like to do that, going after the johns instead of the workers. But nobody ever talks about going after the people who hire undocumented immigrants at places like, say, the Golf Club at Bedminster. Gee, why not?
Because it is performative arglebargle!
But you knew that already! And ugh, joggin’ traitorpuss Josh Hawley was there too, blaming immigrant workers for everybody else’s lower wages, and not, like, the greedy corporations that hire and exploit them. If the labor market is flooded with too many workers then why is Missouri trying so hard to make child labor great again? Why do they have 16-year-olds working in landfills? Maybe riddle us that, Josh Hawley?
UGH, these people.
[Baltimore Sun archive link/ Axios/ Cato Institute]
"funny how in all of this talk, nobody mentioned doing anything about the companies hiring undocumented immigrants at all"
It's almost as if it's actually about finding a scapegoat for Republicans' failed economic policies or something...
/FFS
At some point, I wish one of these witnesses would just shout “Fuck you! When you have real questions you want real answers to, call me. Until then, shove your performative bullshit up your ass. I’m leaving, and if you try to stop me I will slam your empty head on that dais so hard your ancestors will feel it.”