Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly continues to cement his status as one of the snowflakiest members of Donald Trump’s administration, aside from the man himself, after pitching yet another fit over getting called out for his agency’s despicable deportations targeting immigrants who should not have been targeted for deportation in the first place:
Kelly shot back at Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) over the case of a 25-year-old mother and 5-year-old son who were deported to Honduras Wednesday despite the senator’s passionate and public Twitter appeals to the Trump administration.
Casey tweeted about the woman’s deportation while it was in progress, imploring the administration to halt it and excoriating President Donald Trump for the action, given that the family's life was, he said, threatened after the woman witnessed her cousin's murder. "The gang who threatened the life of this child and mother won't waste time in seeking to mete out their revenge," Casey tweeted Wednesday night.
In the process, the family’s attorneys say, DHS revealed “the name of the woman, which they say could put her life at risk in her home country. According to her attorneys, the woman’s family in Honduras had continued to receive threats while she remained in detention.”
“If DHS is putting out the actual names of our clients, that is absolutely wrong of the government,” said Lee Gelernt, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the lawyers working on the case.
Sen. Casey’s tweetstorm about the mother and child caught the attention of numerous immigration advocates and media outlets.
Rather than listening to the merits of Sen. Casey’s plea and understanding that the agency was about to make a grave mistake by sending two people back to danger—the “child is potentially eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status,” tweeted Sen. Casey—Sec. Kelly instead shot back over the fact that he was getting publicly criticized for his agency’s actions:
Speaking at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council in downtown Washington, Kelly said he'd phoned Casey’s office several times to discuss cases of families in detention, but had never heard back from the senator.
“I say it over and over again: If the laws are not good laws, then change them,” Kelly told the audience following a speech about security and economic growth in Central America. “Don't call me, or Twitter or tweet, or go to the press with outrageous stories about how we do business or why we’re deporting somebody.”
Jacklin Rhoads, a spokesperson for Casey, said Kelly's version of the facts was “more than a little full of it ... Our office gave Secretary Kelly’s team a direct office line, a cell and email where Senator Casey could be reached quickly,” she said via email. “While this family was in crisis yesterday, Secretary Kelly did not call. Realizing that he would be asked by press this morning, it appears Secretary Kelly began calling our main office line at 6:30am this morning when any reasonable person would know that it isn’t going to pick up.”
What Sec. Kelly doesn’t seem to get here is that what actually is outrageous isn’t how the deportations are getting reported, but rather the deportations themselves. DHS has been so quick to deport folks for the sake of making America white again, that vulnerable people eligible for relief, as Sen. Casey tweeted, are blindly getting thrown out. And, this isn’t the first time Sec. Kelly has had an issue about getting publicly called out, either. Last month, Kelly told his critics to “shut up” and let immigration agents do their jobs. But when those same agents are arresting hardworking undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, that’s not about to happen. Stay vigilant, but most importantly, stay loud.