Just over nine months after President Donald Trump returned
to office and pardoned his supporters who stormed the US Capitol,
one of the Republican’s top aides suggested that federal law enforcement may
arrest Democrats standing up to the White House’s anti-migrant agenda,
including Illinois Gov.
JB Pritzker.
Asked about the administration’s willingness and federal
authority to arrest the Illinois leader on Fox News Friday, Stephen Miller,
Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser,
responded: “Well, the answer I’m about to give doesn’t only apply to Gov.
Pritzker, it applies to any state official, any local official, anybody who’s
operating in an official capacity who conspires or engages in activity that
unlawfully impedes federal law enforcement conducting their duties.”
“So if you engage in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct
the enforcement of federal immigration laws
or to unlawfully order your own police officers or your
own officials to try to interfere with ICE officers, or even to
arrest ICE officers, you’re engaged in criminal activity,” he said, referring
to US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement. “Different types of crimes would apply. There is
obstruction of justice. There is harboring illegal aliens. There is impeding
the enforcement of our immigration laws.”
“And then, as you get up the scale of behavior, you
obviously get into seditious conspiracy charges, depending on the conduct, and
many other offenses. So again, it depends on the action. It depends on the
conduct. It depends on what is taking place,” Miller continued. He went on to
tell ICE officers that “you have federal immunity in the conduct of your
duties.”
Both Miller’s threat toward Pritzker and other officials,
and his immunity claim, were met with swift backlash, including from Zeteo‘s
Mehdi Hasan, who highlighted Trump’s
pardons for the January
6, 2021 insurrectionists.
“Remember, these fascist freaks pardoned the actual
people convicted of ’seditious conspiracy’ while falsely accusing their
opponents of this serious crime,” the journalist wrote on social media. “(On a
side note, arresting Pritzker would make him the most popular politician in
America overnight.)”
Trump himself has called for
jailing Pritzker and Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon
Johnson “for failing to protect” ICE officers. Priztker, a billionaire and
potential 2028 presidential candidate, has suggested Trump should be removed from office via the
25th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of
staff during the first Trump
administration and authored an infamous, anonymous 2018 New York Times editorial, said Friday,
“Feels like we’re going down the rabbit hole pretty fast here, folks.”
California state
Sen. Scott Weiner (D-11), one of the Democrats running for
former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat in the next cycle, said:
“They’re now explicitly taking the position that state and local elected
officials are committing crimes when they attempt to protect their communities
from the ICE secret police.”
Weiner‘s state Senate district includes San Francisco, one of
the cities targeted by Trump with immigration agents, and a potential National Guard deployment. The president said he backed off the threat to
send troops to the city, for now, after calls from billionaire friends.
However, Trump’s administration is still fighting in
federal court to deploy the National Guard in the Chicagoland area,
where ICE’s Operation Midway Blitz is underway. The people of
Illinois have responded with persistent protests, including at an
ICE facility in suburban Broadview, where agents have met demonstrations
with violence.
“No, ICE officers do not have immunity to assault and
arrest unarmed Americans without a warrant,” former Obama
administration official and Pod Save America co-host Jon
Favreau stressed on social media Friday.
Tufts University international politics professor Daniel
Drezner similarly said,
“This seems very disturbing and also wrong.”
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) concluded:
“Stephen Miller is the most evil, fascist, wannabe authoritarian in the Trump
regime. And that’s saying something.”
Miller’s comments came just two days after Pritzker appeared on Fox News and discussed Trump’s
attacks on him, immigration agents’ actions in Illinois, and the risk that
Trump may try to use US troops to steal future elections.
The governor’s deputy chief of staff for communications,
Matt Hill, responded to Miller’s remarks by pointing to that appearance.
“Holy crap. Gov. Pritzker did ONE interview on Fox,
and Stephen Miller is freaking out,” Hill said on
social media with a snowflake emoji. “All the Gov. did was appoint experts to
collect videos and testimony of what’s happening in Chicago. Now, Miller is
threatening to silence Illinoisans and arrest their governor.”
-Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
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