A former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official asserted on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s administration’s rhetoric about illegal immigrants has led to increased targets on detention facilities.
Veronica Cardenas, a former assistant chief counsel for ICE, said on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that more illegal immigrants and “non-citizens” are being killed because of the administration’s rhetoric. Following the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas, Cardenas did not mention Democrats’ rhetoric against ICE agents, or that the shooter’s bullet casings included the phrase, “ANTI-ICE.”
“This is not an isolated incident. We have seen death among non-citizens being increased and the people, the victims here, the two killed were non-citizens being detained at that time and so it is very difficult. It has been a very decisive environment and the rhetoric does have to stop. Just yesterday, Homeland Security released a propaganda video on their social website stating, or using Nintendo’s Pokemon ‘to catch them all’ and continuing to dehumanize non-citizens,” Cardenas said.
WATCH:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a video to X on Tuesday that showed agents arresting several illegal immigrants with the Pokémon theme song dubbed over it. The agency captioned the post, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” which is a direct quote from the theme song.
Cardenas called on rhetoric against “non-citizens” to be toned down, though she did not once urge people to do the same for ICE agents. MSNBC’s national security and intel analyst Christopher O’Leary criticized FBI Director Kash Patel for releasing a photograph of the bullet casings that indicated that the shooter was targeting agents rather than illegal immigrants.
The shooter opened fire on the facility around 6:40 am Eastern time on Wednesday and killed two illegal immigrant detainees, officials said at a Wednesday press conference. No ICE agents were killed in the attack.
Many prominent Democrats have publicly compared ICE agents to Nazis and have repeatedly called on them to be abolished. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz compared ICE to the “modern-day Gestapo” during a commencement speech at the University of Minnesota law school in May.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on her party to raid ICE facilities if federal agents are supposedly “breaking the law.” In May, she also referred to the immigration enforcement agency as a “rogue agency that should not exist.”
Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett most recently compared ICE agents to “slave patrols” during a Friday appearance on MSNBC, and she also made this claim during a Sept. 12 interview on “The Breakfast Club.” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar cited a debunked story reported by NBC News on Tuesday, which alleged that ICE agents held a 5-year-old autistic girl outside of her home in Massachusetts to “pressure” her father into surrendering, though the outlet later had to issue a correction for “mischaracterizing” the agents’ activities.
This incident follows other violent attacks on ICE facilities since Trump reentered office. Authorities have charged at least 11 individuals in connection to an ambush on an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, in July, which led to the injury of a police officer who was shot in the neck.
An active shooter also shot at Border Patrol agents at a facility in McAllen, Texas, in July.
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