Some people answer questions. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin appeared on CNN Sunday to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision clearing deportations to Haiti, a country where 8,100 people were killed last year, and contributed a clarification.
CNN’s Jake Tapper raised the murder rate. According to Fox News, Tapper said: “More than 8,100 killings documented last year, those weren’t Americans.” Mullin agreed. They were not Americans. This is correct as a statement about the people already killed in Haiti, and it is the complete extent of what Mullin’s answer addressed, which left open the question of what happens to the people being sent there, who are also not Americans, and who will be in Haiti, where the 8,100 people were killed, having just arrived from a country where they had lived safely for up to 16 years.
Haiti has been controlled primarily by armed gangs since 2021, when the president was assassinated and the government structure that existed before the assassination was replaced by the gangs. The UN describes the situation as having reached “unprecedented levels” of violence. The campaign promised to deport criminals and rapists. The people whose TPS status is being ended are, as AOC noted this week, nurses, health care workers, restaurant employees, domestic workers, and parents of American citizens who have lived here for up to 16 years and paid taxes the entire time. Mullin’s response to Tapper’s Haiti murder statistics was to clarify who the victims were, not to explain why the people being sent there will fare differently.
Mullin is a former UFC fighter and professional wrestler who became an Oklahoma congressman and is now the Secretary of Homeland Security, a sequence of careers that prepared him thoroughly for several of the job’s requirements and equipped him on Sunday to agree with Tapper that Haiti’s murder victims were foreign nationals. He said this with the confidence of a man who considers the point settled.
The 8,100 Haitians killed last year were killed in Haiti. The Haitians being deported will be in Haiti. Mullin’s answer covered the first group.
When the defense of sending people to a country is that the people already dying there are not American, who exactly is the defense for?
Sources
Fox News: DHS chief Mullin clashes with Tapper over Haiti deportations after Supreme Court TPS ruling
Raw Story: Markwayne Mullin mocked as he struggles to control temper: ‘Too emotional for this job’
