To their credit the PR people at the Department of Homeland Security are both responsive and just as surly as their on-the-ground ICE and Border Patrol agents. We learned that last week when the Landmark, which broke the story of the ICE agent being charged with misdemeanor battery of a phone-wielding critic, received a response from the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.
Tricia McLaughlin’s name is often in the news. Half the time it is when she issues some sort of mean-spirited response to Americans protesting this oppressive regime and the other half as news outlets try to figure out how her husband, the CEO of a New York ad agency, benefitted from a lucrative contract with the department she works for to create an anti-immigrant ad campaign.
In her response, she said “it is gross” that off-duty ICE agent Adam Saracco has been charged by Brookfield police and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office with misdemeanor battery after he threw an elderly fellow to the ground at a Brookfield gas station because the man was filming him with his phone.
McLaughlin said Robert Held, a 68-year-old attorney, was a direct threat to Saracco’s safety and that Saracco was “targeted and threatened by a known ICE agitator.”
“We won’t accept this. Stay tuned,” she sputtered.
Here’s what’s gross: a taxpayer-funded PR lackey who does not understand the concept of free speech, the right to protest abusive government action up to and including killing American citizens on the streets of an American city.
We applaud the efforts of Brookfield police to actually investigate the actions of a rogue ICE agent in our community and then to bring charges. It is a rare occurrence, so rare that the New York Times picked up the Landmark story.
It is McLaughlin and her Kristi Noem acolytes who need to “Stay tuned.” Because clearly, a rising tide of Americans won’t accept what the Trump administration is perpetrating on this nation.