Cuccinelli has not been officially nominated to his role, and so has not had any Senate committee confirmation hearings; he's been on the job only since June, but he has a record as an immigration hard-liner and of defending the president on television, so I would presume he's one of those 'only the best people' people. Hopefully, we might be able to find out if that's the case.
On Fox News Sunday, Dana Perino was sitting in for the "anti-Conservative" Chris Wallace (that according to a social media comment I saw earlier today), and asked about the citizenship question on the census. Cuccinelli said he thinks the question will be on the census, adding
I think the president has expressed determination. He's noticed the Supreme Court didn't say this can't be asked, They said they didn't appreciate the process by which it came forward the first time. So the president is determined to fix that, and to have it roll forward in the 2020 census.Perino had played the tape of the president stating his new favorite reason for adding the question, since the Supremes shot down the fake "protect the Voting Rights Act" nonsense the administration tried the first time. Here's what Trump said the other day.
You need it for Congress for redistricting. You need it for appropriations. Where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons.When asked if there was any kind of legal concern the president's statement given that the big question is why they wanted to ask it in the first place, Cuccinelli said
Well, and I think the answer is there are many reasons. He listed a few there, starting with the one you mentioned. But it isn't -- it isn't the only one. There are lots of reasons. For my agency, distribution of work can be considered. I mean, there's all sorts of other things. Right now, we are redistricting our workload among our district offices and our regional offices to level that workload and as it shifts around the country we shift, and knowing where that work is coming from is helpful.Perino stated, without offering any evidence, "I know that there are some groups that have been trying to help people who are here illegally to be able to not be found by our government," which Cuccinelli referred to as 'harboring.' Perino wondered if the raids could be successful it people knew the feds were coming for them. Cuccinelli said that was a potential threat to officer safety. And, he said,
And the president commented, I don't call these raids, I would agree with him. This is just what ICE is supposed to do. The fact that we've fallen to the point where we're talking about it like it's news tells you how far we have fallen in the enforcement side. I mean, it's the most violated federal court order in America.
Perino didn't ask for, and Cuccinelli didn't offer any reason as to why ICE was not enforcing this "most violated federal court order" so I'm still not clear on that part.
They talked about changes to the asylum laws, and maybe attaching that to some must-pass bill so that it would finally get done, because it's critical that we change the laws to get rid of the loopholes that allow "fake asylum claims" to jam up the system. Here's a little bit of that discussion, prompted by Perino's noting that Cuccinelli is "a man of deep faith and for people who are at church on Sunday, thinking about these things, they want rule of law but they also have this concern especially about the children and how we're supposed to treat the meek."
That's right. And it's worth remembering that this massive influx of fraudulent asylum claims are swamping the people who truly fit that category, the people who are persecuted for political or religious reasons, or other reasons. Those people are being caught in a backlog caused by an enormous number of false claims, and those false claims are coming because the Congress refuses - especially the house - refuses to take the steps necessary to fix these loopholes that you can drive a truck through...Again, neither of them provided any examples of the loopholes. And, Cuccinelli's answer did not address the question of how we are supposed to treat the meek, other than to say they're screwed by the cheaters. So we're left hanging on that, as well.
On Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan was in her usual spot in the host's chair, and she started with a question about the ICE raids, noting that president Trump had said two weeks but it's been longer, and she wondered what's going on.
Well, essentially, at this point, it's been put in Matt Albence's hand, the acting director at ICE... And they're ready to just perform their mission, which is to go and find and detail and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders. They've been all the way through the due process, and have final removal orders. Who among those will be targeted for this particular effort or not is really just information kept within ICE at this point.Brennan questioned the higher number, noting that it reports said it was going to be in the thousands, not a million. Cuccinelli noted the one million figure was just the total with final removal orders. And,
...it's important to note, here we are talking about ICE doing its job as if it's special, and this really should be going on on a rolling basis for ICE. And they've been interfered with effectively and held up by the politics of Washington to a certain extent. And they're looking forward to just getting back and doing their job.A similar response as on Fox, but instead of a 'how far we've fallen on the enforcement side,' it's a 'Washington politics gets in the way of them doing their job.'
The important thing? It IS their job, and they should be doing it. I won't win any friends for saying that, but the bottom line is, if you've exhausted all of the pathways available and a final deportation order has been issues, we should be deporting them.
Brennan wondered what could be done without Congress, and Cuccinelli noted that they can make regulatory changes (no specifics given) but those "take a long time" and are not the same as legislative changes. Here, though, he offered some specifics.
We really need Congress, for instance to fix the trafficking loophole that allows children from the Northern Triangle, for instance, and other countries around the world, to not be repatriated quickly and returned to their families. We need help with the Flores fix, the Flores Settlement that even the Obama administration fought in 2015.Flores originally applied only to unaccompanied children, but it has been expanded to families, and puts a twenty-day limit on detention. This, Cuccinelli noted, "has tied our facilities up in knots." As far as acting without Congress, he mentioned the public charge rule, which is used to determine whether a person is likely to end up being supported in some way by the government (see here for information on the changes that are under consideration), changes to Flores that might be made without legislative action, and anything else the different agencies can do, within their respective charters.
Responding to Brennan's question on why the Trump administration didn't get anything done when the Republicans held the Congress, he said he thought Congress wasn't responsive to efforts that were made, but stopped short of blaming Mitch McConnell for the failure. Brennan also asked about changes to the asylum rule, and making sure that "people who are legitimately fleeing violence and persecution" are not prevented form seeking safe haven here.
Yeah, And it's important for people to realize that we continue to effectuate an asylum process that is intended to help people who are persecuted for political, religious, etc., reasons. But that whole process is being swamped by fraudulent asylum claims from our border.That was consistent with his response on Fox, which also emphasized political and religious reasons for seeking asylum. Brennan pressed on, noting that the Trump administration had attempted to block domestic violence and gang violence victims, but the courts didn't go along with that.
That's right. Well, the courts - the president has taken, attempted to undertake several actions, including cutting off asylum between ports of entry, for instance, last November. That was enjoined by the courts. That's being litigated. The - the level of judicial activism to stop this administration is historically unprecedented. We have never seen anything like it before.And finally, on the census citizenship question, the discussion focused on how the data would be used, rather than on reasons for asking it. Brennan asked whether immigration officials would see details of the census, in terms of immigration status, and raised the concern that the question was only being asked for political reasons.
Answers of any person are not tied. It's aggregated data...the census is intended to gather an awful lot of information the way it's used now. If your question is, will my agency or other agencies see a person who says, "no, I'm not a citizen" and their name and address and so forth, that's taken on an aggregated basis, that's not individualized data that comes to us.So, if the question makes it to the census, you can rest assured that no data that can get a person deported will be shared with any governmental agency. So it is written, so let it be done. I wish she had pressed him a little more on this topic, to see how consistent he was on the redistricting and funding questions, among other things.
Thoughts on Mr. Cuccinelli, or on his responses on behalf of the administration? Chime in.
See you around campus.
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