President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration stems from a desire to make the country ‘whiter’ and not necessarily safer, according to podcaster and former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard.
‘Of course, everyone can agree, yes, illegal criminals in this country, yes, get them out of here,’ began the 56-year-old Miami resident. ‘But wait a minute, who gets to decide what’s illegal and criminal when you’re just going to violate the Supreme Court and democracy and the constitution and everything else in the name of, now you’ve got an armed militia that says every protest is dangerous.
‘Even the peaceful ones. And you can frame it that way because the people are brown.’
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids. The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on Tuesday. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.
As Le Batard put it, it ‘feels like state militia [is] rubber-bulleting about just basic American freedoms.’
Police and US military are seen arresting anti-Trump protestors in Los Angeles this week
Trump walks with Melania, who has mostly stayed away from Washington in his second term
The son of Cuban immigrants, Le Batard thinks Trump has another agenda with immigration
Producer and Miami Marlins TV host Jeremy Tache agreed.
‘This is a use of the military against our own people,’ Tache said. ‘If this was happening in any other country, we would be looking at that as one of the most horrifying things that could possibly happen.’
The Trump administration has urged immigration judges to deny asylum hearings, the vast majority of which involve Latin American immigrants, while simultaneously ushering in white Afrikaners seeking to leave alleged racist attacks in South Africa.
An initial group of 59 white South Africans arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on a chartered flight last month under the new program announced by Trump. A second group of nine others arrived on June 2.
The Trump administration said it is offering refugee status to white South Africans it alleges are being persecuted by their black-led government and are victims of racially motivated violence. The South African government has denied the allegations and said they are a mischaracterization of the country.
A protester holds up a sign during a demonstration in response to federal immigration operations at Las Fuentes Plaza in Pasadena on Thursday
Agents from US Customs and Border Protection surround demonstrators in Los Angeles
The son of Cuban immigrants, Le Batard believes these efforts are intended to disenfranchise Latino asylum seekers.
‘This is exactly how it is that you circumvent what feels like American democracy to make sure that the others never unite like a union,’ he said. ‘You can always make them the others, and you’ll always have white people on your side.
‘Trying to make this country whiter in a way that is overt, that is political, that is hateful, and allows you to keep the right to make all people other than you criminals based on whatever you make the laws, including just being brown, not having a license or being a criminal, because you’re ‘just like all those other dirty Mexican rapists that we had to build a wall to keep out.”
Le Batard wasn’t arguing to forgive illegal immigration, but rather explained Trump’s reaction to the problem is designed to marginalize America’s ethnic minorities while rallying the President’s white base.
‘We can hide under the semantics argument of, well of course illegal people who are here committing crimes shouldn’t be here,’ Le Batard said. ‘But that doesn’t mean you should make all brown people and black people that.’
Trump’s supporters in the media recently began arguing for a ban on third-world immigration. Podcasters Matt Walsh and Charlie Kirk issued similar posts on the subject, with the latter claiming a declining white population in Los Angeles is proof of the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ – an idea that originated with white supremacists.
