In the wake of the horrifying school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem posited that the Biden administration should halt immigration enforcement in the area.
Kayyem formerly served as an Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security in the Obama administration.
“The most important thing for the federal government to do right now is to say there will be no immigration enforcement during this period in that area,” Kayyem stated, noting that the demographics school district showed it was 80% Hispanic.
Kayyem referred to the “political issues in Texas,” as she said, “It has a large immigration population. You want parents with their kids; you don’t want people hiding right now, and we need to make that clear ASAP because of the political issues in Texas.”
“Again, I don’t know motives; we don’t know motives; I am just telling you demographics,” she said later. “It is a predominantly Hispanic population with a large immigrant community relatively near San Antonio.”
“We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status,” she declared. “We need people to come forward, not to be fearful of immigration status; get their kids, get their family members, because what happens in incidents like this is we’re going to have a strong police presence, a strong federal presence. We know this.”
“A lot of people do not react, especially if their status is unknown., do not react to police presence as you or I may, and we want to make sure that they know, despite all the politics going on in Texas right now, it’s the federal government that’s in charge of immigration enforcement,” she said. “And people are safe; get your kids, get your families together; do not hide. The White House just needs to say that right now.”
A few minutes later, Kayyem doubles down:
"We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status."
Again, she suggests it's because of "all the politics going on in Texas right now" dealing with immigration. pic.twitter.com/oYouvMmkh6— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) May 24, 2022
In late March, commenting on the scores of illegal immigrants who had been released in his town, Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, said, “I got here at 7:40 a.m. and they were already out. … People in our community are fed up with it. … And it’s not like we want to dump ’em on San Antonio but you have thousands more resources than we do here in Uvalde.”
This week, McLaughlin said, “The Hispanic community is fed up with this. We have a lot of great Hispanic families in our community; their parents came over the right way.”