The 100 mugshots set out like campaign yard signs on the North Lawn of the White House might as well have each borne the name “Guillermo Horton.”
The function of these photos of the largely Hispanic “worst illegal immigrant criminals” was the same as the mugshot in the infamous Willie Horton ads that Republicans aired during George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign against Mike Dukakis, then the Democratic governor of Massachusetts.
Horton, who called himself William, once said the name Willie “was created to play on racial stereotypes: big, ugly, dumb, violent, black.” He had been convicted of kidnapping a Maryland couple and raping the wife after stabbing the husband while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison, where he had been doing life without parole for fatally stabbing a youngster 13 times.
His mugshot was used as if it were a photo of Lucifer himself, accompanied by a contention that Dukakis was soft on evil.
During all three of his presidential campaigns, Donald Trump has invoked the specter of a whole host of devils crossing our southern border. He has now ridden that fear back into the White House, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt marked the morning before the 100th day of his second term by posting a video of the 100 signs. Birds can be heard cheerily chirping and the sun-splashed White House is in the background as the camera pans along the mugshots. Each has the word “ARRESTED” across the top. The felon’s particular crime is recorded below.
Twenty-one had “MURDER” or another version of homicide. Eighteen had “RAPE.” Three were for “FENTANYL,” with another two for unspecified drugs.
And a horrifying 46 were for “SEXUAL ASSAULT OF A CHILD” or other sex crimes where the vicitims where underage. Maybe sex offender registries made these ones easier to track. Those who prey on youngsters are certainly the worst of the worst of the worst.
Of course, not all of these violent criminals arrived in America during the Biden years. And most had already been arrested for their crimes beyond immigration violations when Trump regained the office. Jorge Alvarez Almero of Chicago was arrested for “predatory sexual assault” in February of 2015.
“Victim was 5 years of age,” the sex offender registry notes.
He was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison, but was paroled on April 11 of this year.
Neither ICE nor Illinois correctional authorities responded to queries as to exactly how long Almero had been at liberty, if at all. He is listed as having been officially taken into custody by ICE ten days later, on April 21.
As long as due process was observed, nobody can rightly be anything but glad that he is no longer among us and wish he never had been. The same can be said about some or maybe all of the others whose faces appeared on the White House lawn.
But you have to ask yourself if Trump was not using the specter of these child rapists and other violent criminals to divert attention from three other children, aged 2, 4, and 7. All three are American citizens. The Honduran-born mother of the two-year-old and the Honduran-born mother of the older kids are reportedly undocumented. Mothers and kids were all taken into custody during routine check-ins at an ICE office. They have all been deported to Honduras.
ICE says the two-year-old’s mother said she wanted her daughter to be deported with her. A lawyer for the girl’s father and his client told ICE he wanted the child to remain in the U.S. The lawyer suggested the father had immigration concerns of his own, but has given a relative who is a U.S. citizen custody of the girl.
As ICE went ahead with the deportation, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana (a Trump appointee) got involved and sought to speak on the phone with the mother while she and the girl were on a deportation flight. ICE informed the judge that it was too late, the girl and her mother had already landed and been released into Honduras.
The judge scheduled a hearing for next month, “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
The judge’s order noted, ”It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen.”
As for the other youngsters, the four-year-old is said to have metastatic cancer. Deportation for this child means being sent away from the doctors and medication that offer a chance for survival. What mother could consent to a child’s deportation in those circumstances unless she was subjected to diabolical pressure?
The deportation of 100 Guillermo Hortons, including 46 pedophiles, does not make it less illegal to deport kids who are citizens, especially a tyke with cancer.
The kids do not have signs on the North Lawn. They should have lives in America—a country just as much theirs as it is Trump’s.
The post Opinion: Why Trump’s Willie Horton Lawn Signs are a Sick Smokescreen appeared first on The Daily Beast.
