Incoming Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem used her confirmation hearing to wreck the Democrats’ claim to be the champions of migrant children.
The drama came at the end of the Friday hearing when Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) pushed the Democrats’ narrative that President Donald Trump “separated” children from their parents during his first term.
She responded:
Senator, the Trump administration never had a family separation policy. They had a zero-tolerance policy which said that our [border] laws would be followed.
What I’m alarmed by is the over 300,000 [foreign] children that went missing during the Biden administration. And when we talk about [migrant] children and what they’re potentially facing — as far as victimization in this country in the traffic trafficking that’s going on — this administration’s lack of desire to find out where those [migrant] children are [and] what they may be going through is alarming to me.
…
Senator, keeping families together is critically important to me and to this country. I’m concerned about Laken Riley’s family that they no longer have her [after her murder by a migrant]. I’m concerned about the fact that we have [foreign] people in this country that don’t know where their children are, or [foreign] people in other countries who send their children here and have been lost by this administration. So yes, my focus will be to keep families together … [and] keep our children safe from the drug trafficking and the drug epidemic that has hit this country.
Blumenthal declined to respond.
Noem also promised to shut down the quasi-legal migrant pipelines created by President Joe Biden’s deputies.
“If I have the opportunity to be Secretary, on day one, CBP One will be shut down,” Noem told Sen. Hawley (R-MO).
But the data will be preserved, she said. “There’s data and information in there that we will preserve so that we can ensure we know … who’s already here that we need to go find.”
Noem also suggested Trump’s administration will shut down the parole program created by President Joe Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
By January 1, Mayokas had used the CBP-One and his parole program to import almost 1.5 million economic migrants for homes and jobs that otherwise would have gone to young and old, ill and healthy, Americans.
The two programs cut a huge loophole in the nation’s border laws by granting “humanitarian parole” to a huge population of economic migrants.
The parole provision that is included in current law was intended for a small number of emergency cases, such as sick airline passengers.
The administration will focus on deporting 425,000 migrants with criminal records, and then on migrants who have been ordered home by judges, and migrants who have overstayed their visas, she said. “Beyond that, we will continue conversations” about future priorities, she said.
The Senators were very friendly to Noem, although they largely avoided the most contentious issues, such as the investor-driven outsourcing of white-collar jobs enabled by the H-1B visa program.
Noem fended off a plea from Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for more foreign workers, such as H-1B white-collar workers.
Slotkin asked: “I believe you can’t fully control the border unless you give [foreign] people that we need, for our companies, for our economy, a legal, vetted way to come here. So do you believe in legal, vetted immigration and that we need more of it in the United States?”
Noem responded
I do believe we need to follow our legal immigration laws and that it needs to be vetted. We need more resources. I believe in some of the elements of this …[Immigration] has always been a part of our history, and will be a part of our future. We just need to make sure that we’re adhering to our nation’s laws.
Blumenthal urged Noem to support more H-1B migration into the white-collar careers needed by his constituents and their growing children:
What this nation needs is comprehensive immigration reform [amnesty]. We know about the need for more H-1B visas and other kinds of extensions of the visa program that enable the United States to have more [white-collar] workers that are desperately needed in certain areas of our country …We know it is posible because we did it in 2013.
Noem did not reject Blumenthal’s radical demands but ignored his statement.
The subject of legal migration and visa workers was almost completely ignored by the Senators, largely because it would reveal the growing gap between wage-cutting employers and worried American families.
A rush of recent polls show that Americans expect Trump to establish a pro-American immigration policy, and show that pluralities of Republicans want less legal migration and less white-collar H-1B migration. For example, a January 8 poll by YouGov showed that 27 percent of Americans want the H-1B program to be reduced or eliminated, while only 17 percent want it increased. Among Republicans, 40 percent want to cut or eliminate the program, while only 12 percent want it to be expanded.
However, investors will keep outsourcing white-collar jobs to people from India, China, Costa Rica, and many other countries — until they are blocked by a politically influential and powerful movement of white-collar Americans.
So far, Trump has not shown he wants to block the white-collar outsourcing. Instead, he is zig-zagging between his investors allies, and the voters he needs in 2026.
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