Trump administration uses Tucker Carlson's show to announce immigration retribution against New York
The stated reason for this new crackdown is also false
Written by Eric Kleefeld
Published
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf appeared Wednesday night on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to announce that the entire state of New York and its residents were being kicked out of the Global Entry program, which provides expedited reentry for travelers coming back into the United States, and other Trusted Traveler Programs. The move is pushback against a New York law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses without having their information shared with immigration enforcement agencies.
The stated reason for this new crackdown is also false. John Sandweb, former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, told CNN: “This is just irrational in the sense that sanctuary policies in no way shape or form affect DHS' ability to vet people for global entry and other trusted traveler programs.” National security analyst Juliette Kayyem tweeted that the operational effect of the rule change “burdens @DHSgov and @TSA resources nationally as well, making us less safe.”
The Trump administration is not only making policy announcements through Fox News, as a favored political organ — but it’s making pronouncements about immigration policy on possibly the most bigoted show on that whole network.
Citation From the February 5, 2020, edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight
CHAD WOLF (ACTING SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY): And I will say that today we sent a letter to New York indicating because they took these measures that New York residents are no longer eligible to enroll in these trusted traveler programs.
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): All residents in New York, the tens of millions of people who live there.
WOLF: That is correct. They can't enroll or reenroll in these trusted traveler programs that Customs and Border Protection offers, because we no longer have access to make sure that they meet those program requirements. So we need to do our job. We need to make sure that —
CARLSON: Of course, no, and good for you. It's just, that will be a shock to a lot of New Yorkers. But I support that completely.
Carlson’s show has been a longtime cesspool of anti-immigrant vitriol and white nationalist rhetoric. He has claimed that terrorism is “obviously tied” to immigration and alleged that “our leaders are radically and permanently changing our country, wholly on the basis of their faith that diversity is, in fact, our strength.” (Indeed, long before he even had a Fox News show, Carlson proclaimed back in 2004, “I don’t see” how “diversity is the strength” of the country.)
And recently, Carlson has said that rising housing costs in California are “100 percent an immigration problem” and said that admitting more immigrants would “despoil” and pollute America,” to “make it a place you wouldn't want to live,” and that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.” He also hosted disgraced Canadian sportscaster Don Cherry for a softball interview in which Carlson declared that critics of Cherry’s televised rant against immigrant communities are “fascists” who “actually have no real feelings. They are faking their outrage.”