Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., claimed Thursday that, under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been "primarily going after innocent people, including U.S. citizens," in their deportation efforts.
"CNN News Central" host Sara Sidner noted that Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the latest ICE raids would focus on targeting "the worst of the worst" and asked Magaziner whether he believed the department had kept its word.
"Absolutely not. And they've been lying about this from the beginning," the Democratic lawmaker responded. "You know, Secretary Noem said the same thing - 'We're going to go after the worst of the worst' - during her confirmation hearing a year ago. And that is not what they have done.
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"They have been going after grandmothers, children. They deported a 4-year-old U.S. citizen child with cancer so that he couldn't get his cancer treatment. They are deporting veterans, legal green card holders who have served this country honorably," the congressman added.
In April, The Washington Post reported that three American citizens from two different families, ages 2, 4 and 7, were deported along with their mothers from a Louisiana facility. The report alleged that the 4-year-old, who has Stage 4 cancer, could not reach his doctors, according to the family's lawyer.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio later denied those claims, saying the children were not deported; rather, their mothers - who were in the country illegally - chose to take them along.
"That's a misleading headline. Three U.S. citizens, aged 4, 7 and 2 were not deported. Their mothers were legally deported, and the children went with their mothers. They can come back to their father or someone who wants to assume them. Ultimately, it was the mothers who were here illegally. You guys make it sound like ICE kicked down the door and grabbed the child and threw them on an airplane, and it's misleading. And that is not true," Rubio said.
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Magaziner claimed that 70% of all individuals detained by ICE this year "were not convicted of any crime" before arguing the federal government should focus deportation efforts on violent offenders.
"By all means, get rid of the worst of the worst. If someone is here illegally, and they've committed a violent crime, by all means, those people should be deported and must be," he asserted. "But what is happening is that Stephen Miller has set an arbitrary quota of the number of immigrants who he wants to see removed from the country. He does not care whether they are legal immigrants, illegal, whether they are naturalized, whether they've committed crimes or not.
"So, the administration has been totally indiscriminate in going after not just the worst of the worst, which we should be going after, but primarily going after innocent people, including U.S. citizens, including legal green card holders, people who are just trying to work for a living and diverting resources away from other important homeland security priorities."
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Magaziner said DHS is "a lot more than immigration enforcement," and that instead of focusing on issues like terrorism or retail theft, it is "pulling resources away from all of that to go after gardeners and grandmothers and children."
"And I have no reason to believe that they're going to change course in that approach," he concluded.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pushed back on Magaziner's claims, telling Fox News Digital, "This is a lie. ICE officers are facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them because of dangerous, untrue smears from elected Democrats. ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism. Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens."
Fox News Digital reached out to DHS and ICE for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
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Fox News' David Spector contributed to this report.
