Trump installs two hate groups leaders in administration
Two hate groups leaders have been given high-level positions at federal immigration agencies in the US Department of Homeland Security.
Jon Feere, a former legal policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, has started his new job as an adviser to Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan said Tuesday.
Also, Julie Kirchner (pictured below), the former executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, has been employed as an adviser to Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, Lapan added.
CIS and FAIR, think tanks based in Washington, support restricting legal and illegal immigration, but they have more extreme views on illegal immigration and undocumented immigrants.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization which has been tracking hate groups since the 1980s, has designated the two as hate groups.
Kirchner, who previously worked at FAIR from October 2005 to August 2015, joined the presidential campaign of Donald Trump as an immigration adviser.
Feere (pictured below) promoted legislation to abolish a law that enables automatic citizenship for US-born children of undocumented immigrants.
FAIR, CIS, NumbersUSA and a number of other key anti-immigrant organizations in the US were all founded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist.
Tanton has openly embraced eugenics, which is the science of improving the genetic quality of the human population by spurring selective breeding and at times, supporting the sterilization of genetically undesirable groups.
Tanton has had a position on the board of directors and advisory board of FAIR since 1979.
Since Trump took office, he has signed two executive orders on immigration banning citizens of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, but both orders have been blocked by two federal courts.
