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Invoking the Insurrection Act
00:06:29
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unidentified
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Trump Boulevard, in his honor. | |
| We'll bring you live coverage of the road naming here on C-SPAN. | ||
| That's scheduled to start at 3.15 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| While we wait for the rural health care discussion with the President to begin, we'll show some of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Chad Wolfe, the former acting Homeland Security Secretary in the Trump administration and the Homeland Immigration Chair for the America First Policy Institute here to talk about Trump administration immigration enforcement actions across the country. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, I just want to begin with the headline that we're seeing, the president considering invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota. | ||
| When you look at ABC Brennan Center's reporting on the Insurrection Act, this is what they report. | ||
| It allows deployment of troops in the U.S. in limited situations. | ||
| The president can invoke it when, quote, unlawful obstructions make it impractical to enforce the laws. | ||
| And last invoked in 1992 when requested from then California Governor Pete Wilson during the Rodney King riots. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, what do you think of this idea of invoking the Insurrection Act? | ||
| Would it be appropriate? | ||
| Well, I think it's certainly becoming an option, right? | ||
| And why is it becoming an option for President Trump there in Minneapolis? | ||
| Because I think two things are at hand here. | ||
| One is obviously you have some ongoing protest every day and certainly at night. | ||
| That protest is getting violent. | ||
| You see arrests almost every night. | ||
| I think two days ago or a day ago, they broke into an ICE vehicle, stole a weapon. | ||
| And so that continues. | ||
| At the same time, you have local police not supporting and not helping ICE go out and do its mission. | ||
| And obviously, ICE officers over the last, I would say, week or so have been involved in several incidents. | ||
| So you've got two things at play here. | ||
| And I think what the Trump administration is looking at is saying, look, we don't want this to get out of control, right? | ||
| It's one thing to have people protest. | ||
| It's another thing when that protest leads to violence. | ||
| And then that continues. | ||
| At the same time, the city and the state are not acting fast enough. | ||
| And of course, we saw this in 2020 when parts of Minneapolis burned and the governor eventually asked President Trump for help restoring order. | ||
| I don't think the Trump administration is looking to have that sort of repeat. | ||
| And so they want to head this off. | ||
| I think they are encouraging and they're trying to talk to the state and to the local police to take charge to arrest those individuals that are committing that violence, hoping that it will obviously die down. | ||
| It's okay to have people protest. | ||
| You can protest all day, every day. | ||
| But the violent part of that protest, I think, is what is most concerning. | ||
| If you were Homeland Security Secretary today, would you advise him to invoke it? | ||
| Well, I don't have all the information that they have, so I don't have the data. | ||
| I don't have the intelligence. | ||
| I don't know everything that they're seeing. | ||
| But from just looking at the public reporting and looking mainly at the words of the governor and the mayor, who have it doesn't appear that they are going to let their police actually assist ICE. | ||
| And the fact that they continue to incentivize these folks to go out and to continue this by saying ICE is undertrained. | ||
| They're the Gestapo. | ||
| They only pick up colored people. | ||
| All of that, of course, is not true. | ||
| And so if I see the remarks by the governor and the mayor continuing, I would likely advise the president to do so at some point. | ||
| Look, I think the violence has to reach a certain threshold. | ||
| I'm not sure that we're there yet, but I do think that this is certainly a viable option for the president. | ||
| What factors would the White House consider and the Homeland Security Secretary consider to invoke? | ||
| You just mentioned two, it sounds like. | ||
| What are officials in Minnesota saying and then the level of violence? | ||
| I think a large part of it is going to be their internal or private discussions with the state and the city, trying to understand what is their posture, what are they doing, what is the coordination between federal law enforcement and state law enforcement. | ||
| You know, I had a very similar incident in Portland in 2020 where a courthouse, very much like the ICE facility now in Minneapolis, but in a different degree, was under siege. | ||
| And I asked state and local police, mayor and the governor in Oregon at that time to help, and they refused to help. | ||
| And we had three months of out-of-control looting and burning. | ||
| And finally, they sent in the state police, and that's when the violence started to subside. | ||
| So I would encourage both the mayor and the governor to be a partner with federal law enforcement here and making sure that you're holding those that are committing acts of violence accountable. | ||
| They are the best ones to make those a local arrest. | ||
| I don't think ICE wants to make local arrests for people looting and obviously targeting their facility. | ||
| They would rather have local police do that so that they can focus on their other mission. | ||
| Why didn't you advise the president in 2020 then to invoke the Insurrection Act in Portland? | ||
| Well, it's been widely reported. | ||
| We had discussions about that. | ||
| We had discussions around a variety of things. | ||
| But at that time, some of the violence was subsiding at the time. | ||
| And then, as I indicated, the governor eventually agreed to send in the state police. | ||
| If the Insurrection Act was invoked, what would it look like on the ground? | ||
| Well, you're either going to have the Minnesota National Guard nationalized, right? | ||
| So then instead of it being under the command of the governor, it's going to be under the command of the president and the Secretary of War and others, or you're going to see active duty military in there. | ||
| And most likely they're going to go in there and they're going to do two things. | ||
| They're going to restore order. | ||
| They're going to make sure that no property is being burned, no vehicles are being vandalized, things of that nature. | ||
| Again, if the police, if local police aren't going to do that, someone's got to do it. | ||
| Otherwise, we're in a lawless place. | ||
|
Why We Left ICE Protection
00:02:46
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| So they would go in and do that as well as protect ICE. | ||
| Obviously, ICE is under attack. | ||
| We see a number of attacks of officers lately. | ||
| And again, local police is not helping ICE do their job. | ||
| So my guess is that they would also go in and not do that immigration job, but they would provide protection for those agents that go out there and do that. | ||
| Our guest this morning is Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security Secretary in the first Trump administration. | ||
| He's here to take your questions and your comments about immigration enforcement. | ||
| Democrats, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Just include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, your reaction to the video that we've all seen on that fatal shooting by an ACE agent in Minnesota. | ||
| Yeah, I've been pretty clear on this. | ||
| Obviously, my first instinct is to let the investigation play out. | ||
| I've been a part of too many of these where, you know, what you see on a video that comes out in the hours and the days after an event is very different than what the investigation leads to in all sorts of different directions. | ||
| So I'm on the side of letting the investigation play out. | ||
| I will say, obviously, I have seen the video. | ||
| In my opinion, it believes that the officer did act in self-defense. | ||
| But, you know, you need to take eyewitness testimony. | ||
| You need to figure out everything that was going on. | ||
| I think it's also important, and there's a lot of case law for this, making sure that we understand what was in the mind of those officers. | ||
| What were they briefed on before that shift started? | ||
| They were likely briefed on that they had three car rammings earlier in the day and they had four or five the week before. | ||
| You know, what kind of intel were they getting coming into that situation? | ||
| And of course, we've spent the last week dissecting that video. | ||
| That officer had a second and a half to two seconds to make a call. | ||
| So all of that's going to be taken into account into the investigation. | ||
| But again, as it appears, the video and the different angles that I've seen, clearly this individual did not adhere to lawful commands, did not get out of the car, did not stop the car, obviously, and then back the car up and then surge the car forward, either targeting that officer or trying to abscond from law enforcement. | ||
| All of that, all of what I just described is all illegal. | ||
| None of it is okay. | ||
|
ICE Hiring Practices
00:09:11
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| And I think we've gotten to this place in today's world where individuals, American citizens, believe it's okay to do all of that in front of an ICE officer in an ICE operations. | ||
| We wouldn't do that with FBI agents. | ||
| We wouldn't do that with a local police department if they were carrying out a criminal operation. | ||
| And we shouldn't do it with ICE either. | ||
| All right, let's get to calls. | ||
| Jill in Iowa, Democratic caller, you're talking with Chad Wolf. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi, I would really like you to get some facts out there. | |
| There's a slate article that came out about the hiring practices at ICE and how they're not even letting people finish their paperwork and they're hiring them anyway. | ||
| They haven't done their background check. | ||
| And I also want to know how many of the pardoned January 6th violent people are now working for ICE because it looks to me like a lot of them are. | ||
| And then the big thing with FBI agents and everybody else, they don't go around masked. | ||
| They don't look like a Gestapo. | ||
| I think they're being called the Gestapo because their actions and their looks kind of match. | ||
| Federal judges don't get to wear masks. | ||
| No one in America should be wearing masks. | ||
| And they say, oh, well, these officers are doxed. | ||
| Well, look what's happening to our people in college. | ||
| The people who just simply said you don't have to follow illegal orders, which, by the way, is the truth and just simply stating what the code is. | ||
| No one, I don't hear the president lowering the temperature about all the doxing that happened to Melissa Slotkin. | ||
| Okay, it's Jill. | ||
| I'm going to jump in. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, let's start with her comment about training. | ||
| What do you know about training? | ||
| Yeah, obviously ICE officers are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia, just like many other federal law enforcement, as well as state and local. | ||
| It's a premier training center. | ||
| That's where they go to get the majority of their training. | ||
| And of course, they have then specialized training. | ||
| And then they have recurrent training as well. | ||
| Most of their operations, as you can imagine, are in an urban environment. | ||
| So that's what they are trained in versus the Border Patrol, which is less urban, I would say, than what ICE normally does for their operations. | ||
| The caller was correct. | ||
| They are obviously on a hiring spree because they need more officers. | ||
| A lot of ICE officers left during the Biden administration. | ||
| And then, of course, the reconciliation bill that passed last year gave ICE more money for officers as well. | ||
| So they are certainly on a hiring spree. | ||
| And as you hire, you train, you deploy, and you get them out into the field. | ||
| So, you know, they undergo training like they always have. | ||
| And then I would say on the mask, I think she had a primary concern about ICE officers being masked. | ||
| Primarily, why are they covering their face? | ||
| They are covering their face primarily because there is an extensive amount of doxing of these officers. | ||
| When you go to your work, you don't get doxed. | ||
| There's not a presumption that all of your personal information is going to be out there on the internet. | ||
| There's going to be threats against you and things of that nature. | ||
| This is almost the normal operating environment for ICE officers today. | ||
| And so they should be able to go to their job, do their job without the threat of death threats and personal information out on the internet. | ||
| So that's primarily why. | ||
| If you didn't have that and you didn't see that, I would say that you would likely see them reverting back to the way that they did things before this doxing became very, very prevalent. | ||
| And we've seen this now for many, many years. | ||
| You know, I've been asked about some of the tactical gear that they wear. | ||
| Again, we got to remember that the majority of these operations, they are carrying out a criminal operation, meaning that they are either pulling someone over in a car or they're going into a neighborhood and their target is a criminal, illegal alien. | ||
| And so they have to protect themselves, just like any other law enforcement officer would. | ||
| It's not fun in games what these officers do. | ||
| It's dangerous work and they need to protect themselves. | ||
| That's why you will see body armor, body gear. | ||
| You will see the vest. | ||
| You'll see a variety of different things there. | ||
| And that's just to make sure that they are protected as they go in to a certain environment. | ||
| The article the viewer was referring to is from slate.com. | ||
| The headline, you've heard about who ICE is recruiting. | ||
| The truth is far worse. | ||
| I'm the proof for those who are interested. | ||
| Tammy in Florida and Independent. | ||
| We'll hear from you next. | ||
| Hi, Tammy. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Thank you for letting me on. | ||
| Your caller is complete. | ||
| Your guest is being completely disingenuous. | ||
| All of the videos show ICE shooting priests who are standing there praying and completely unprofessional. | ||
| The only people creating an insurrection are you by taking people. | ||
| I've seen 10 videos just this morning of ICE pulling people over randomly, not allowing them to show their citizenship paper and taking them into custody anyway. | ||
| Leaving children alone, arresting people who were here traveling. | ||
| The reason this is happening is because ICE is out of control. | ||
| If they would stand down and behave professionally, then we wouldn't need to do any insurrection. | ||
| Personally, I think ICE should be abolished. | ||
| I think the FBI and the state and local law enforcement could work together to do everything that ICE does in a much more sane and professional manner. | ||
| All right, Tammy, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| There's a headline in Politico from two days ago: abolish ICE. | ||
| Many Democrats are ready to fund it, the movement that is, with conditions. | ||
| Chad Wolf. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this is a question for Congress. | ||
| Congress has given ICE a very specific authority and very specific mission, which is to remove individuals that don't have a legal right to be in this country. | ||
| It's what every other country around the world does. | ||
| And so for these individuals that say, such as the caller that says, look, and we hear this from the mayor and the governor, which is we support our neighbors, we protect our neighbors. | ||
| Well, there in Minneapolis, ICE has pulled off, has arrested a thousand criminals in the state of Minnesota. | ||
| So those are their neighbors. | ||
| Those are the people that they want to protect. | ||
| So if you're upset with ICE, then you're upset with Congress because Congress has given ICE a very specific mission. | ||
| Go out, arrest criminal, illegal aliens, but it's not just criminals. | ||
| It's anyone that doesn't have a legal right to be here in the United States. | ||
| Because if you don't have that, you don't have a country. | ||
| If anyone can come into the country and no one's going to be removed, or what you're saying is that the United States government needs to wait until you commit another crime here in the United States before you're removed. | ||
| I disagree with that. | ||
| I think part of law enforcement is to make sure that a crime doesn't get committed and they act before that happens. | ||
| And so this idea that we have to wait until an illegal alien commits another crime against a U.S. citizen before you're able to prioritize and remove, I would disagree with that. | ||
| So, I mean, we can talk about the tactics of ICE. | ||
| You can talk about all of that. | ||
| A big part of it, though, is the fact that they don't have local support. | ||
| So the caller indicated, well, she'd rather have FBI and local do the job. | ||
| Mayor Fry has made it very, very clear. | ||
| They have a stand down order. | ||
| They do not help ICE. | ||
| They do not enforce immigration law. | ||
| He has been abundantly clear on that message. | ||
| And so when you have a mayor and you have local political leaders that say, I will not do this, that's actually the definition of an insurrection, by the way. | ||
| It's when the state government cannot or will not help you enforce federal law. | ||
| And so that's what's going on in Minneapolis. | ||
| We don't see this in the state of Texas or Florida or South Carolina or anywhere else. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Because you have local police partnering with ICE to do this in a jail setting, in a very safe environment, or to actually partner with them when they go out. | ||
| It's only in places like Minneapolis and Portland and Chicago that they just refuse to help ICE. | ||
| Mr. Wolf, how do you respond to folks who have answered this Quinna Piak poll who may not agree with abolishing ICE, but 57% disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 40% approve? | ||
| Does ICE have an issue here? | ||
| And are you concerned about how they are being perceived? | ||
| Well, I'm certainly concerned about how they're being perceived. | ||
| I would say a couple of different things. | ||
| I would say that there's a lot of misreporting out in the legacy media. | ||
| I think your caller, the last caller, was a perfect example of that. | ||
| I think she said, well, ICE is arresting U.S. citizens. | ||
| That couldn't be further from the truth. | ||
| Now, what ICE will do is when they go in, for instance, if they're pulling over someone that's a target, that's an illegal alien, and they have four other people in the car or four other people in the house, they are absolutely going to ask for their identification to understand who they are, just like any other police officer would. | ||
| If those individuals are U.S. citizens and they have outstanding warrants, guess what? | ||