A top aide of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem slammed Kim Kardashian after the star criticized the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant purge.
“Ms. Kardashian is misinformed and detached from the very reality of the operations in Los Angeles she has decided to opine on,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told TMZ. “These are the violent criminals who Homeland Security, under President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s leadership, have removed from Los Angeles streets: murderers, rapists, gang members and child pedophiles.”
“Why does Ms Kardashian continue to do the bidding of criminals at the expense of innocent Americans and brave law enforcement?” she added.
McLaughlin was referring to comments made by the reality TV star on Thursday during an awards ceremony in Venice, Italy, at which Kardashian said that the vast majority of those currently being deported have never committed a crime.
“You want to believe that there’s a powerful message in protection, but then you see that it’s not really happening like that,” she told the audience. “It’s really tough, but I think that we have to do what we can to protect the people that have really supported and built our country.”
Echoing Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has repeatedly claimed that immigration officials have been targeting the “worst of the worst.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—the architect of the administration’s immigration crackdown—has set a goal of 3,000 detentions per day, which critics contend has caused Immigration and Customs Enforcement to target law-abiding migrants.
Those claims have become the subject of ridicule after NBC obtained data in June indicating that only a third of those arrested had a criminal background.
Kardashian’s criticism calls to mind her 2018 meeting with President Trump to discuss prison reform, specifically the possibility of clemency for Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who at the time was serving a life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses.
After that highly publicized meeting, Trump commuted Johnson’s sentence, with Kardashian praising the president and expressing her gratitude for his decision, remarking that she had “nothing bad to say about the president.”
