In the wake of the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, former Homeland Security official turned CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem appeared on Jake Tapper’s The Lead and demanded that President Biden suspend immigration enforcement in the area of the town. She would go on to scoff at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s desire to have armed protection in schools and suggest he meant to arm the kids.
Near the top of the 5:00 p.m. hour, Kayyem (who has a habit of giving off psycho vibes) pleaded for the White House to call off immigration enforcement agencies. “From an investigation standpoint … the most important thing for the federal government to do right now is to say there will be no immigration enforcement during this period in that area,” she demanded.
“It has a large immigration population. You want parents with their kids. You don't want people hiding right now. And we need to make that clear, asap because of the political issues in Texas,” she added.
She was back almost 11 minutes later to double down on her demands that “the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status.”
She even continued her suggestion that Texas was somehow the problem in this situation:
Because what happens in incidents like this is when we're going to have a strong police presence, a strong federal presence. We know this. A lot of people do not react, especially if their status is unknown, do not react to police presence as you or I may. And we want to make sure that they know, despite all the politics that are going on in Texas right now, it’s the federal government that’s in charge of immigration enforcement, and people are safe.
In the second half of the hour, Tapper went back to Kayyem to have her respond to AG Paxton’s desire to have an armed defense at schools. Tapper’s disgust with Paxton’s defense of gun rights and facts about the mentality of murders was noticeable as he read the statement:
Attorney General Paxton said moments ago, quote, “people that are shooting people that are killing kids, they're not following murder laws. They're not going to follow gun laws. I’d much rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they can respond when something like this happens because it's not going to be the last time,” unquote. The victims, of course, 14 elementary school children and a teacher. What is your response to Attorney General Paxton?
Claiming she was “going to address” Paxton the he “intended it to be addressed,” Kayyem started by suggesting Paxton was possibly talking about arming the elementary students. “I want to take his claim seriously, and the first is obviously, we aren't arming elementary school kids, obviously. We don't arm them, and they were defenseless,” she huffed.
“The second is the issue of arming teachers which is clearly going to be part of this political debate in the future,” she griped. And while citing no evidence, she went on to assert “clearly going to lead to more deaths rather than fewer, because of accidents or things getting elevated. That's what most of the data shows.”
And throughout her rambling, Kayyem decried even being defensive with schools at all:
And that involves things that Paxton is bringing up. That he wants us not to talk about guns because he wants to talk about whatever is animating this person, but that's so defensive. I mean, think about it as a parent, like, you're just, you know, you're just going to play defense all the time? Like cross your fingers that the teacher is armed? I mean, we don't do that in any other situation.
These demands to suspend immigration enforcement was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Ancestry and LifeLock. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
CNN’s The Lead
May 24, 2022
5:05:36 p.m. Eastern(…)
JULIETTE KAYYEM: From an investigation standpoint, I'm going to do what the facts tell me now. So, I’ve got demographics first of all, an 80 percent Hispanic school district. So, the most important thing for the federal government to do right now is to say there will be no immigration enforcement during this period in that area.
It has a large immigration population. You want parents with their kids. You don't want people hiding right now. And we need to make that clear, asap because of the political issues in Texas.
(…)
5:16:11 p.m. Eastern
KAYYEM: I want to say one more time, and it's important, again, I don't know motives, we don't know motives. I'm just telling you demographics. It is a predominantly Hispanic population. With a large immigrant community, relatively near San Antonio.
We need the federal government to say right now, everyone is essentially safe harbor right now in terms of immigration status. We need people to come forward, not to be fearful of immigration status. Get their kids, get their family members.
Because what happens in incidents like this is when we're going to have a strong police presence, a strong federal presence. We know this. A lot of people do not react, especially if their status is unknown, do not react to police presence as you or I may. And we want to make sure that they know, despite all the politics that are going on in Texas right now, it’s the federal government that’s in charge of immigration enforcement, and people are safe.
Get your kids, get your families together. Do not hide, and the White House just needs to say that right now. This should not be delayed.
(…)
5:39:40 p.m. Eastern
JAKE TAPPER: Attorney General Paxton said moments ago, quote, “people that are shooting people that are killing kids, they're not following murder laws. They're not going to follow gun laws. I’d much rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they can respond when something like this happens because it's not going to be the last time,” unquote. The victims, of course, 14 elementary school children and a teacher. What is your response to Attorney General Paxton?
KAYYEM: So, I want to take his statement seriously because this is obviously the sort of winning political stance, winning in the sense that we don't get changes to gun laws. And so, I want to take his claim seriously, and the first is obviously, we aren't arming elementary school kids, obviously. We don't arm them, and they were defenseless.
(…)
The second is the issue of arming teachers which is clearly going to be part of this political debate in the future.
So, arming teachers is only going to work if there's, you know, the teacher, him or herself is able to stop the perpetrator. And that's making a huge assumption. So, instead of trying to play defense all the time, arming everyone in school, which is clearly going to lead to more deaths rather than fewer, because of accidents or things getting elevated. That's what most of the data shows. You want to play a little offense against these kind of attacks.
And that involves things that Paxton is bringing up. That he wants us not to talk about guns because he wants to talk about whatever is animating this person, but that's so defensive. I mean, think about it as a parent, like, you're just, you know, you're just going to play defense all the time? Like cross your fingers that the teacher is armed? I mean, we don't do that in any other situation.
So, just because I want to take that at face value. I'm already getting a lot of hostility about on Twitter and social media, people are obviously -- I'm just going to address it as he intended, as the attorney general intended it to be addressed.
(…)
