DHS Was Designed as a Weapon

About this episode

A fresh wave of outrage over the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has surged after two high-profile events involving ICE in the span of a week: the shooting of a young father in New York City last Thursday, and the Monday morning Homeland Security Investigations raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home. Reporting from the Wall Street Journal suggests that the raid was a part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to strip the Minnesota Democrat of her U.S. citizenship. Omar arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Somalia and became a naturalized citizen in 2000, long before the start of her political career. The outspoken progressive congresswoman has since become a foe of President Donald Trump; in a statement, her spokesperson condemned the raid on her home as “an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies.” Omar’s House colleague, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., argues this sort of weaponization is an inherent feature of the Department of Homeland Security, which was established in 2003 as part of the George W. Bush administration’s mounting war on terror. This week on The In