- Miles Taylor said Trump wants to send criminals found at the border to Democratic-run cities.
- Taylor said Trump especially wanted the “murderer” and “rapist” to be identified and removed.
- Taylor said you don’t need a lawyer to “recognize that doing so can be very illegal.”
Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor during the Trump administration said this week that former President Donald Trump had asked his team to find murderers, rapists and criminals at the border and send them to Democratic-run cities.
Taylor made this statement When appearing on CNN Weighing how this week Texas Governor Greg Abbott Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been sending immigrants to places like New York and Martha’s Vineyard, respectively.
Taylor is best known for an op-ed in The New York Times in 2018 calling for “resistance” within the Trump administration. He has since become an outspoken critic of the former president.
“In January and February 2019, Donald Trump directed us to go and take migrants from the border, citing ‘buses and dumping them into democratic cities and blue states,'” Taylor told CNN.
“But he’s more specific,” Taylor said of Trump. “He wants us to find murderers, rapists and criminals, especially to make sure we don’t imprison them, we imprison them in these cities.”
Taylor detailed what his team did next.
“It doesn’t take a lawyer or a genius to realize that this can be very illegal. But let’s put murderers, rapists and criminals aside – can you take people across the border and throw them in the blue state?” he said . “We went, we asked lawyers, and they told us: ‘No, the federal government can’t do that.'”
Recalling that his team had told the White House that implementing Trump’s plan would be “illegal,” Taylor said DeSantis’ and Abbott’s recent efforts “run into the same problem.”
On Wednesday, Taylor retweeted a November 2020 tweet detailing “stupid, immoral, un-American and/or illegal things” Trump asked him to do while in office. at the top of the list What Taylor was referring to was Trump’s directive to “ship thousands of illegal immigrants, especially those with criminal records, into Democratic sanctuary cities to create instability and conflict.”
“DeSantis and Abbott are resurrecting zombie Trump policies that we think are illegal (one of the reasons I quit and warned against re-electing him),” Taylor wrote in his Wednesday tweet. “Trumpism is very much alive — his followers are taking it to the next level.”
Representatives for Trump, DeSantis and Abbott did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
