When Homeland Security Secretary
Kristi L. Noem visited El
Salvador’s most notorious mega-prison on Wednesday, she sported an eye-catching
piece on her wrist that experts have identified as an 18-karat gold Rolex
Cosmograph Daytona watch that sells for about $50,000.
The high-end Swiss watch lent a
striking contrast to Noem’s tour of the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT,
where imprisoned men watched silently from a crowded cell as she recorded
a video for
a social media post warning undocumented immigrants not to enter the United
States. “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences
you could face,” Noem said.
Noem’s choice of watch kicked
off a race among internet sleuths to identify it and infuriated immigration
advocates, who said the juxtaposition was insensitive to the harsh reality of
mass imprisonment and deportation.
“You’re in front of all these
people in a very poor country, who are in the bottom 10 or 20 percent of their
country … and it looks like you’re just flaunting your wealth while you flaunt
your freedom,” said Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin
America, a human rights group…
“For a public servant to be
wearing it is quite the statement,” said Alan Bedwell, a vintage watch dealer
and the owner of Foundwell in New York, who compared it to a “flag-waving
exercise.”
“To be wearing that in El
Salvador while visiting a” maximum-security prison, he said, “is kind of like a
big F you.” […]
The Washington Post
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