Border security chief Kristi Noem casually batted away numerous Democrat complaints and barbs during her first hearing at the House appropriations committee on Tuesday.
She repeatedly shut down Democratic Party narratives and also shot down pleas from Republican legislators to import more low-wage migrant workers for employers who do not want to invest in high-tech, labor-saving machines.
Yet demoralized Democrats insisted they won a victory in a much-shared post from “Occupy Democrats’s [sic]” saying:
BREAKING: MAGA Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem brutally faceplants during a Congressional hearing when asked if she has the “authority” to deport American citizens — and gets torn to shreds by a Democratic Congresswoman.
They really need to keep “Fascist Barbie” away from the cameras at this point…
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The truth is that Americans are getting swept up in Trump’s mass deportation crackdown. NBC News reported recently that American children — including a 4-year old with cancer — were deported to Honduras.
The conversation went differently.
Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) read her staffers’ script when she asked Noem: “Do you believe that the US government has the authority to deport American citizens?”
“No, and we are not deporting citizens,” Noem calmly responded without reading notes.
Underwood continued reading:
I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen. And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.
“They have not, that is not true,” Noem said as Underwood tried to block her response, saying, “Secretary Noem, that was not a question.”
In reality, no U.S. citizen children have been pushed through the lengthy deportation legal process. But some deported illegal migrants have decided to take their U.S.-born children back to their home countries.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (DTX) also tried to claim Trump is deporting children, saying, “Trump hopes to deport and jail U.S. citizens abroad … Will any of the funding … be used to execute this idea of Donald Trump’s, which is deporting US citizens abroad?
“We have not deported any US citizens, so that false media narrative that you’ve heard out there just simply isn’t true,” Noem responded.
“I’d like to now focus on US citizens who were deported. In fact, three children so far, likely more children,” Escobar said in a different round of questions. “It was the parents’ choice to take the children … it is our policy to keep families together,” Noem calmly responded as Escobar tried to shut down her response.
Noem also sidestepped Republican demands for more workers.
Many of the GOP’s members on the appropriations committee are business-first Republicans who do as little as possible to support curbs on migration. Some push hard for massive migration expansions. In contrast, most Democrats on the committee are ideologically and emotionally pro-migration. This motivation disparity ensures that Democrat appropriators often snatch policy gains or shut down Republican initiatives with only feeble resistance from the GOP appropriators.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), who owns multiple orchards, prodded Noem to ease the inflow of more migrant H-2A farmworkers. “I can’t overstate the importance, as you know, of the agricultural labor force to produce food and fiber in our country,” he said.
Migrants “don’t get to come into this country and have the law apply to some people and not others, that the scales of justice should apply equally,” Noem responded. “Those visa programs are ones that we continue to have discussions with … many of you,” she said, adding that Congress has the authority to set limits for visa workers.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) also asked for more foreign workers, but Noem responded:
The President believes that we have a workforce here that deserves jobs that pay very well with benefits and a future here in the United States … and that we [also] need to keep the dream open for immigrants that want to come legally.
“You’re doing a masterful job,” Ciscomani replied.
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