- Miles Taylor said Trump wanted criminals found at the border to be sent to Democrat-run cities.
- Taylor said Trump specifically wanted to identify and expel “murderers” and “rapists.”
- Taylor said it “could be too illegal to admit.”
Miles Taylor, the Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during the Trump administration, said this week that former President Donald Trump once told his team to find murderers, rapists and criminals at the border and send them to Democrat-run cities.
Taylor made this statement During an appearance on CNN How did you shake this week? Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ are sending immigrants to places like New York and Martha’s Vineyard, respectively.
Taylor is best known for writing a 2018 op-ed article in The New York Times that said there was a “resistance” within the Trump administration. He has since become a vocal critic of the former president.
“In January and February of 2019, Donald Trump ordered us to take immigrants from the border and, quote, ‘live and dump them in Democratic cities and blue states,'” Taylor told CNN.
“But he was much more specific,” Taylor said of Trump. “He wanted to identify our murderers, rapists and criminals, and in particular, we did not imprison them, and we put them in those cities.”
Taylor detailed what his team did next.
“It doesn’t take a lawyer or a genius to recognize that it would probably be very illegal to do that. But put aside murderers, rapists and criminals – can you take people from the border and dump them in blue states?” she said. “We went, and we asked the lawyers, and they told us: ‘No, the federal government can’t do that.'”
Recalling that his team told the White House that implementing Trump’s plan would be “illegitimate,” Taylor said DeSantis and Abbott were “walking into the same problem” in their latest efforts.
On Wednesday, Taylor retweeted a thread from November 2020 in which she detailed “stupid, immoral, un-America and/or illegal things” that Trump asked her to do while in office. At the top of the list What Taylor said was a directive from Trump to “thousands of illegal immigrants (especially those with criminal records) to create instability and conflict in Democratic sanctuary cities.”
“DeSantis and Abbott are resurrecting zombie Trump policies that we said were illegal (one of the reasons I gave up and warned him not to re-elect),” Taylor said. wrote In his tweet on Wednesday. “Trumpism is very much alive — and his acolytes are taking it to the next level.”
Reps for Trump, DeSantis and Abbott did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
