President Donald Trump will continue deporting migrants who have not committed violent crimes, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told a disappointed media corps on Tuesday.
“The Trump administration will continue our focus on deporting all illegal aliens present in our country, with a focus on the worst of the worst criminals,” Leavitt scolded the reporters.
The White House reporters were disappointed because they had learned on Monday from CBS that Trump is following through on his campaign pledge to deport all categories of illegal migrants, not just the foreign murderers and rapists that he spotlights in his speeches.
The appalling discovery was the core of a CBS report and interview on Monday, which claimed:
The president, for example, often talks about ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] going after murderers, gangsters, sexual offenders, and rapists, but only 2 percent of the people arrested by ICE have been charged or convicted of homicide or sexual assault, and another 2 percent were identified as gang members. The numbers really illustrate that the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy is also impacting people who, yes, may be in the country without legal permission, but are not any threat to the public or to national security.
The CBS report was produced by Camilo Montoya-Galvez. He is a legalized immigrant from Colombia, South America, who has a record of favoring migrants and increasing migration into Americans’ homeland. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, his coverage was applauded by Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
On Tuesday, Leavitt dashed the hopes of Montoya-Galvez and his media peers, saying:
I’ve seen this CBS report floating around. There’s a lot of liberal talking heads and pundits and Democrat-elected politicians who think that this single story and these statistics and the way they are painted is somehow a shot at this administration. It is not, and let me correct the record.
Number one, the Trump administration has been clear from day one that any illegal alien present in this country is subject to deportation. However, the priority, of course, is going after the convicted criminals, the worst of the worst, the murderers, the pedophiles, the rapists in this country.
Interestingly, in the CBS story — [and] with Democrat talking heads on television — [the reporters] are not [admitting that] nearly 60 percent of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions, and among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are for nonviolent crimes.
Oh, well, what are nonviolent crimes you ask? This has coincided with what DHS has been saying all along — that approximately 70 percent of illegal aliens arrested under President Trump have pending criminal charges and/or prior convictions, and these so called nonviolent crimes [include] drug trafficking, distribution of child porn, burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor in human smuggling, just to name a few. So just because a crime is not violent in nature doesn’t mean that the crime is victimless.
And I can guarantee every single person who is out there on television right now, pointing to these statistics, which were taken out of context by CBS News, would not want an illegal alien convicted of the distribution of child porn or fraud or DUI living in your community.
“The Trump administration will continue our focus on deporting all illegal aliens present in our country, with a focus on the worst of the worst criminals,” she said.
Polling shows that Americans are split over migration enforcement. Clear majorities favor the deportation of both violent and nonviolent migrants, but a crucial block of swing voters is unnerved by video coverage of deportations.
This PR problem is managed by Trump’s officials who have spotlighted the deportation of violent criminals, dubbed “the Worst of the Worst.”
Under Trump’s low-migration, high-deportation reforms, Americans’ wages are up, housing costs are down, inflation is declining, transport costs are shrinking, crime is dropping, and corporations are spending heavily to help Americans become more productive and earn more wages for each working hour.
For example, RestaurantBusinessOnline.com reported on January 23 that Trump’s officials are raising voters’ wages by deporting illegal migrants: “Fewer workers mean restaurants will once again have to compete for employees the only way they can, by paying higher wages. Wages over the next two years are expected to accelerate, according to Oxford Economics, from 3.7 percent this year to 5.6 percent by 2027.”
His economic reforms, however, are opposed by establishment Republicans and their progressive partners who operate discriminatory, low-wage Sanctuary City economic enclaves.
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