Former Rep. Jack Kingston, a spokesperson and senior advisor for President-elect Trump, said Monday in a CNN interview that he would support deporting undocumented immigrants arrested during protests.
“I’m curious. I’m curious, Congressman. If there’s a Latino undocumented person in that group who’s arrested for protesting, do you think that person should be deported?” David Gergen, a CNN senior political analyst, asked Kingston.
“I think the law should apply,” Kingston responded. “Absolutely. Are you saying that if there’s a law out there it should not be enforced?”
“You should enforce — of course you should enforce the law,” Kingston said. “That’s not a debate. I want to say this — I’m kind of glad you brought it up because that’s what this election sort of boiled down to is, ‘are we a nation of law?”
Kingston’s threat conflicts with House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R) assurances on Sunday that lawmakers would not form a deportation force to round up and deport undocumented immigrants.
The president-elect promised in his first media interview since he won that he would deport anywhere between two and three million “criminal” immigrants and build up the southern U.S. border with both a solid wall and border fencing. Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to get rid of an Obama administration executive action that has given temporary deportation relief and work authorization to roughly 800,000 undocumented immigrants and to triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to help round up immigrants for deportation.
Kingston’s comments go beyond that to advocate the deportation for undocumented immigrants who are simply protesting, which is not against the law.
Since Trump’s victory last week, angry voters and non-voters have taken to the streets in major cities across the country to hold vigils and to protest the election outcome. Many of these individuals are the same people Trump has denigrated throughout his campaign, such as women, people of color, and immigrants.
What’s more, the Obama administration already aggressively employs deportation to enforce immigration law. There were 235,413 removals from the United States in the 2015 fiscal year.