Vice News: “ICE spokesman quits rather than make “false” statements for Trump and Sessions”*Specifically, Schwab was frustrated over statements, made by officials like Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf had helped about 800 undocumented immigrants evade arrest when she warned the public that ICE would launch a four-day raid in late February. The number of immigrants who avoided arrest was far lower, Schwab told the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the news of his resignation.
In reality, ICE agents picked up 232 people, and the agency had expected to make an even smaller number of arrests, Schwab told Oakland Fox affiliate KTVU. In fact, he said ICE couldn’t have possibly picked up those 800 people because the agency rarely captures 100 percent of the people it targets.
“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” Schwab told the Chronicle. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong. They asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time, and I quit.”*
Was Sessions statement true that there were over 800 wanted aliens at-large in the community? If that’s true, then the statement was true; the mayor did help 800 evade arrest. It doesn’t matter how many they actually got and how many they were prepared for, all 800+ were potential targets of arrest.
Also, by that logic, the police helped every criminal who ever managed to elude capture, which requires a level of logical twisting difficult even by Trump supporter standards.
It appears that everyone agrees with the 800 number. Sessions didn’t make it up.
The issue is that this is the number of people who remained at large, versus the number of remained at large as a result of the mayor’s warning.
That said, from the quote I’ve seen attributed to Sessions, he pretty clearly said the latter, which was incorrect. (I don’t know if he decided to make this claim on his own or was fed bad info.)
You’ve been here for nine years. You’re no stranger to the debate forums. If you present something you claim is a fact, it’s on you to provide a cite, to demonstrate that you didn’t just make it up. You know this.
The linked article in the OP. You guys are being pretty ridiculous. The story is clearly that ICE had a little over a thousand people targeted and they only caught 232. The “lie” Schwab refused to go along with is that they would have caught everybody on the list without the Mayor’s warning, even though 232 was apparently better than they expected.
Y’all, reread Pinmin’s post 3. F-P correctly corrected his misunderstanding: it’s not the 800 that’s the problem, it’s the claim that the mayor helped them escape.
(The fact that of those 800 very few presented a threat to anyone is another issue–but that’s not what Pinmin was wrong about).
