WATCH: Democrats Gasp and Groan as Trump Announces New Office to Further Criminalize Immigrants

‘To Further Vilify Immigrants, He’s Creating a Crime Victim Office’

President Donald Trump during his Tuesday night address to Congress announced he is creating a new office in the Dept. of Homeland Security to assist American citizens who have been victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. It’s unclear why the nationality or legal status of the criminal would necessitate additional, heightened assistance from the federal government, and that’s because it doesn’t.

“I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims,” Trump’s speech reads. For some reason “Victims” is capitalized in the official White House transcript. “The office is called VOICE –- Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement,” he told Congress.

Democrats could be heard gasping and groaning.

Listen, as he makes his announcement halfway through this short clip:

“We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests,” Trump told lawmakers, but really, the American public, especially his base.

Who is silencing the victims? Does the President think the news media doesn’t report crimes if the perpetrator is undocumented? Because that’s absurd.

Why does the legal status of the criminal matter, to the victim, or to anyone else? A crime is a crime.

Local law enforcement and prosecutors are responsible for assisting victims of crimes, not the federal government, unless it’s a federal crime.

By creating this new office Trump is literally endorsing the mentality that all immigrants are criminals. He is, in the minds of many Americans, criminalizing all immigrants.

Michelle Avery Weston, whose Twitter bio says she is a “former fed,” posted these tweets showing her old business card, to explain why there’s no need for this, and what Trump is actually doing:

It is literally a stunning move from a president who claims he wants to embrace the Tenth Amendment, a president who just revoked federal guidance designed to help school districts protect the rights of transgender students, saying it is a states’ rights issue. Why would the federal government need to intervene in these cases? 

What Trump is actually doing is criminalizing all immigrants, regardless of their legal status.

He’s telegraphing that immigrants are dangerous, they are criminals, such terrible criminals that we need to create a special federal office to help their victims.

NCRM has reported this before: Trump sees all immigrants, everywhere, as “illegal.” 

Days before his inauguration, Trump railed against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attacking her for opening up Germany to Syrian refugees. These are people fleeing civil war, people who are leaving everything they own desperate to find a safe haven, a place to protect their families. 

Trump chastised the German leader, saying, “Merkel “made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know taking all of the people from wherever they come from. And nobody even knows where they come from. You’ll find out, you got a big dose of it a week ago. So I think she made a catastrophic mistake, very bad mistake.”

“Illegals.”

They aren’t “illegal” when they are invited into the country and processed through that nation’s immigration facilities.

But to Trump, all immigrants are “illegal.” And that’s dangerous.

Here’s what others had to say on Twitter: