The Associated Press had screaming breaking news this morning.
According to the headline “Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups.”
It set the internet on fire. Even though water quickly was thrown on the fire, the meme now is developed.
Within the body of the article is presented the consideration as being serious and as being at high levels:
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press….While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration related missions on the U.S.Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.The memo is addressed to the then acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.It would serve as guidance to implement the wide ranging executive order on immigration and border security that President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.
The story was published before obtaining White House or DHS comment:
Requests to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for comment and a status report on the proposal were not answered.
The story went wild on social media.
It was picked up and republished at numerous newspapers, which often just run AP stories verbatim:
The White House and other government officials pushed back in unusually quick fashion.
What appears to have happened is that there was a very early draft of a proposal that never made it to consideration at senior levels of the bureaucracy, the DHS head, or the Trump White House.
To run a headline that Trump was considering the proposal, or even that the proposal was under consideration by the Trump administration, at best was misleading.
I have not yet seen an AP response to the denials.
But there’s a new strain emerging: This was all as set up, a way for Trump to precondition the population to such an event.
With the added benefit of hindsight, Trump’s news conference attacks on the media yesterday were prescient.
UPDATE: AP now has released the draft memo, and it’s clear that the AP story was hyperbole at best. It appears to be nothing more than authorization to entering into cooperation agreements.
Draft Memo Associated Press Trump National Guard Immigration Round Up by Legal Insurrection on Scribd
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