Human rights and faith organizations are only escalating their opposition to State Department nominee Ronald Mortensen, a xenophobe recently exposed for screeds vilifying immigrants and refugees. Despite having literally worked for an anti-immigrant hate group, the Trump administration has nominated Mortensen to head State's office for refugees.
The good news is that Mortensen’s nomination could be hanging on by a thread, and now the organizations hope to keep pressuring enough senators to topple his nomination. “Describing him as an ‘anti-immigrant zealot,’ the groups—part of the We Are All America coalition—have deployed field workers in nine states, employed Hill letter-writing and call-in campaigns, scheduled in-district events during the August recess, and are lobbying Senate Foreign Relations Committee members.”
“He’s from central casting. He’s Cruella de Vil,” said Joshua Hoyt of the National Partnership for New Americans. “He’s triggered a real, significant, grassroots organizing campaign. This is not a decimation of our refugee infrastructure, it is a destruction of it.”
Mortensen has been among the worst bomb-throwers of Trump’s picks, writing that “illegal aliens” are “destroying the futures of innocent American children for their own selfish purposes,” and that Dreamers “have committed serious felonies that impact American men, women and children.” Never mind that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients have to pass background checks, never mind that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born Americans to commit crime, and never mind that it’s Donald Trump’s former campaign chair that’s sitting in jail right now.
The criteria is clear as day: if you hate immigrants, there’ll always be a spot for you in the Trump administration, which is why so many hate group leaders and activists are “infiltrating every part of the federal government.” So what if you’re wholly unqualified to fulfill the duties of the job. The only thing that matters to this pack of degenerates and racists now governing the United States is that you are qualified to work against the interests of the job.
“Defeating the nomination of Ronald Mortensen, an anti-immigrant zealot, will send a message there are boundaries—even in this political climate—of who can be nominated to serve in the key position dealing with the millions of people displaced by war and climate and disasters around the world,” Hoyt said.
Mortensen’s nomination, said immigrant rights leader Frank Sharry, “is like Richard Spencer being appointed head of the civil rights unit. It’s not the fox guarding the chicken coup, it’s a monster in charge of the chicken coup.” Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to reject this monster.