Expert rips Newsom for reported effort to help illegal migrants evade Trump policies: ‘Destructive leadership’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom's reported plan to help illegal immigrants and their families threatened by President-elect Trump's mass deportation plan was slammed as a show of "destructive leadership" on Thursday, two days after POLITICO published details from an internal memo detailing a draft of the plan.
"We just had an election on November 5. People voted for secure borders, safe streets and knowing that the president was going to initiate a deportation effort, not just because he wants to, but because we just had about 12 million people enter the country and be encountered by CBP crossing the border illegally. Something must be done about what just happened over the last four years, and now he wants to use the state's funds and the state infrastructure to flout federal law," Ron Vitiello, former U.S. Border Patrol chief said Thursday on "Fox & Friends."
He continued, "This is a state that has some of the highest income taxes in the country, some of the highest sales tax in the country, and has got a $68 billion deficit… so he's going to use taxpayer resources to protect who, exactly? People who are in the country illegally, who broke the law to be there and have also broken the law in the jurisdictions in which they live in California."
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The memo, titled "Immigrant Support Network Concept," proposes the "creation of an Immigrant Support Network comprised of regional ‘hubs’ to connect at-risk individuals, their families, and communities with community systems — such as legal services, schools, labor unions, local governments, etc.," according to POLITICO's report.
The drafted plan, though "sparse on details" and "still under review," appears to echo broader efforts by blue state Democrats to challenge Trump's stringent stance on illegal immigration. After Trump was elected, Newsom called a special legislative session and talked of a $25 million "Trump-proof" legal defense fund.
When contacted about the reported proposal, Gov. Newsom's office previously told Fox News Digital the document has not been reviewed in Sacramento, adding it was instead drafted by the state's department of social services.
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Scott Murray, the deputy director of public affairs and outreach programs for the Department of Social Services, told Fox News Digital the document is "not a final proposal."
"This document is an internal and deliberative draft document meant for internal discussions as part of a number of possible considerations given the incoming federal administration’s public remarks," he said in a statement.
Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.