Sarah Pierce
@SarahPierceEsq
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Director of Social Policy @ThirdWayTweet; Former @USCIS, @HSGAC, & @MigrationPolicy. Views are my own.
Washington, DC
Joined April 2009
Every Democrat should be saying this on repeat. The President is prioritizing political theater over public safety. His administration is neglecting investigations into child exploitation, human trafficking, and terrorism in its fanatic effort to drive up deportation numbers.
DHS has diverted thousands of agents from critical public safety investigations to combat human trafficking and terrorism to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants. Trump is making America less safe.
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The American people are fed up with the lies from the Trump administration. This is not business as usual. And I refuse to take part in Republicans’ political theatre.
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GOP lawmakers are abdicating responsibilities to their own constituents by blindly repeating admin talking points rather than conducting investigations of: -arrests of US citizens -ICE's use of force -policies that could protect ICE -ICE impersonations -the reckless hiring surge
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Before walking out of the GOP's farcical attempt at an ICE oversight hearing, @SenAlexPadilla explains "Today's hearing is not a serious intent to protect law enforcement, it is designed to feed the propaganda machine… and I refuse to be a part of this charade."
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The wild thing is Trump started this process on day 1, issuing an executive order that rewrote the mission of Homeland Security Investigations to deprioritize: ➡️ child exploitation ➡️ human trafficking and ➡️ terrorism. And instead focus on bumping deportation numbers.
DHS agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown. A probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down because of the shift. And efforts to combat human smuggling have languished.
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Mexico's complaints: https://t.co/r9larUWmvG Andrea's smart piece:
kjzz.org
The complaints come at the same time as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum navigates delicate negotiations with the Trump administration, one analyst says.
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In her post today, Andrea highlights the big role Mexico played in lowering the border numbers during Biden's last year. Now, Mexico just filed 30 complaints with the UN over US treatment of migrants. Will they also come to Trump's rescue when the border numbers tick back up?
TOMORROW: A look at Joe Biden's #immigration agenda during his last year in office and how he got the border numbers down by 70% Part of my ongoing analysis via Substack — subscribe here https://t.co/NYkFCF9fMv
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Bumping for anyone who didn’t see it yesterday. The Trump admin is diverting agents away from trafficking, child-exploitation, and terrorism cases to inflate deportation stats. The consequences are showing up in real investigations. Congress & the public deserves answers.
Every Hill staffer should make sure their boss reads this. Trump is pulling agents off child-exploitation, trafficking, and terrorism-finance cases to bulk up its political deportation push. This isn’t just a shift in priorities. It’s a blow to public safety.
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Absolutely. More than two decades ago, on a bipartisan basis, Congress approved a gov reorg to focus on terrorism & other risks to national security. In less than a year, Trump has unilaterally reoriented those resources to focus on a political vendetta. That concerns everyone.
@SarahPierceEsq Not only Democrats, but anyone who takes counterterrorism, national security, and child abuse and exploitation seriously. These victims, children in particular, should be more important than arresting landscapers and agricultural workers. The cost of not doing so is too high.
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Scoop: The Trump administration is planning a policy change that could make it harder for immigrants to get green cards and other approvals if they are from countries subject to the president’s travel ban, according to internal documents. https://t.co/M67KqViehU
nytimes.com
The policy change is a major expansion of the administration’s push to crack down on immigration from countries that it says lack sufficient screening and vetting abilities.
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Please read the article and share it widely. Public safety depends on letting these investigators do the work they are trained for—work that protects children, disrupts traffickers, and counters real national-security threats. Those missions can’t wait. https://t.co/SdhyKLtYVD
nytimes.com
Under President Trump, an agency intended to keep Americans safe has diverted resources from combating child abuse, trafficking and terrorism.
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Democrats should be saying this clearly: This administration isn’t prioritizing the crimes that put Americans at the greatest risk. It’s prioritizing mass deportation numbers above all else—even when that means leaving kids, survivors, and national-security cases hanging.
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Congress needs to step in. Get the numbers. Get the briefings. And get these investigators back to the cases that actually keep people safe. Every day this continues, the cost grows.
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This reporting is vital because it is the most thorough evidence we have yet of the full scale of these diversions. DHS hasn’t publicly released numbers. Congress should be pursuing real answers here.
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These choices prioritize politics over the country's safety. Pulling investigators off terrorism, trafficking, and child-exploitation cases for street-level immigration sweeps doesn’t strengthen public safety. It weakens it.
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The national-security implications are just as serious. A terrorism-finance probe tied to Iranian oil has been stalled for months because the agents working it were moved to immigration operations. Money, ships, and evidence have slipped away.
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Agents from the Center for Countering Human Trafficking—the tiny unit Congress strengthened to expand anti-trafficking work—have been pulled into Trump’s deportation sweeps. There are currently NO agents working at the center. Survivors will pay the price.
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HSI has rescued thousands of children from exploitation over the last two decades. Their work in this space is exceptional. When you pause a case like this, evidence disappears & predators adapt. Kids can lose their chance at rescue. Taking agents off this mission is criminal.
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One example from the piece is hard to shake: An HSI agent working a child exploitation case involving violent abuse of a young child was reassigned to help boost arrest numbers. That child is now more vulnerable. And she is unlikely to be the only one.
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Every Hill staffer should make sure their boss reads this. Trump is pulling agents off child-exploitation, trafficking, and terrorism-finance cases to bulk up its political deportation push. This isn’t just a shift in priorities. It’s a blow to public safety.
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