A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville’s Democratic Mayor is making news during her taxpayer-funded trade mission to the United Kingdom, and upsetting local and statewide Republicans along the way.
During an interview with Times Radio in London, Mayor Donna Deegan suggested that former President Donald Trump would implement “concentration camps” for undocumented immigrants, essentially putting “people in what would really amount to a concentration camp-type situation to round them out of the country.”
Deegan added that “doesn’t seem to me to be a very American thing to do.”
When the host accused her of using loaded language, Deegan didn’t back down.
“What would we call them? If you’re rounding people up and putting them in camps?” Deegan responded. “What would we call those? It’s a concentration of people that are in a camp. I’m not suggesting anything beyond that, but I just think it seems rather inhumane to me.”
She went on to double down on the Trump denunciation, saying “human rights abuses” would be “inevitable.”
“When you flat out call a group of human beings animals and say they are poisoning the blood of our country, then promise to round them up in detention camps, what would lead anyone to believe that they would be treated humanely?”
Deegan is not the first to make such a suggestion about the former President’s border intentions. But she may be the first Mayor of a major city to do so while overseas on a trade mission, this one associated with the 1-5 Jacksonville Jaguars’ “home” games in England.
Scientific American floated the idea of Trump’s deportation plan echoing “past rhetoric that led to civilian detention camps,” taking issue with the former President’s argument that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” domestically.
The Center for Immigration Studies on the Right argues, meanwhile, that Trump’s proposals echo back to previous plans workshopped by the Congressional Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The conservative Cato Institute offers its own take on Trump’s immigration policies while in office, arguing that he reduced legal immigration but kept levels of illegal immigration roughly the same as they were under Barack Obama.
Additionally, the Washington Post argued that while Obama built cages at the border amid a 2014 influx of illegal immigrants, Trump accelerated the policy of migrant family separation, with up to 1,500 children separated from parents. Trump has since claimed that 325,000 unaccompanied minors are unaccounted for, numbers the Center for Immigration Studies attributes to an independent Inspector General’s report.
Whatever the case, Deegan is making news beyond her stated goal of economic development for the Bold New City of the South on her British trip.
Deegan is backing Vice President Kamala Harris in November, and appeared with Harris on occasions when she came to Jacksonville for speeches.
Now, with less than three weeks before the election, she is making arguments on a global stage boosting her friend and ally, which is not lost on state leaders and GOP City Councilmen who says Deegan is omitting key facts.
“The audacity of Donna Deegan to reduce the atrocities of the Holocaust to a political cheap shot is disgusting and beneath people of Jacksonville. The taxpayers footing the bill on her two week junket to London sent her there to bring back jobs, not lie about President Trump,” remarks Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.
“Looking forward to (Deegan) calling out her buddy ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris for jailing children in cages. I’ll wait,” Rory Diamond posted to X Wednesday.
Ron Salem, meanwhile, says that “the phrase concentration camp has one meaning,” referring to “some of the darkest days in our world’s history.”
“Comparing illegal immigration policies to the mass annihilation of our Jewish brothers and sisters is grossly inappropriate and should be apologized for,” the former Council President said.
Sheriff TK Waters, in an extended statement, condemned the Mayor’s position as well.
“Mayor Deegan’s statement to The Times (London) regarding President Trump’s border and immigration policy is shocking and reckless,” Waters said, blasting the equation of “a commonsense immigration policy with one of the most horrific atrocities of the 20th century.”
“Here are the facts: Kamala Harris, who Deegan supports, has allowed a wide-open border and millions of illegal crossings. Along with a surge of violent criminals, fentanyl has poured into our country and poisoned our communities .This year alone, our officers have seized nearly 15 kilograms of fentanyl, enough to kill over 7 Million Americans and since Harris took office, JSO officers have responded to 970 fentanyl related deaths. Something must be done,” Waters added.
“Only President Donald J. Trump can secure our border and restore safety, security, and economic prosperity to the American people. The people of Jacksonville expect more from our Mayor than knee-jerk responses about President Trump’s policies. It is downright shameful.”
The Republican Party of Florida backs Waters also, saying Deegan’s comments “were completely reprehensible.”
“Under Harris-Biden, every town is a border town and is impacted by a wide open border. We join with Sheriff Waters in condemning the Mayor’s dangerous rhetoric,” they posted to social media.
People high up in previous mayoral administrations, both Republican and Democrat, are also condemning the Mayor’s remarks. Whether they do so on record remains to be seen.
18 comments
rbruce
October 16, 2024 at 11:49 am
If Mayor Deegan says so, it must be true. More proof that one does not need to be intelligent to be a politician.
kathy
October 16, 2024 at 11:53 am
Trump is following the Hitler playbook. We must not let this happen. Do not allow this man to come near the White House.
Truth
October 16, 2024 at 12:23 pm
Were something like this to happen under Trump (which I doubt it will) he would be following the Obama playbook, not Hitler’s.
https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/president-obama-wants-continue-imprisoning-immigrant-families
MHDuuuval
October 16, 2024 at 9:55 pm
TK is going to get the surprise of his life when he learns that DJT is expecting local law enforcement to corral and and process the interlopers.
This immediately brought to mind how MAGA Dee got a law forbidding public sleeping, which put the burden of actually rounding up and housing the sleepless on the taxpayers and local governments.
MHDuuuval
October 16, 2024 at 10:00 pm
Obama incarcerated entire families; Trump broke up and separated families, imagining that he was sending a message to asylum seekers by kidnapping their children.
Obama also focused on getting the migrant criminals out of the US, putting less priority on regular folks who presumably were working, paying taxes, and raising a family without interacting with the law.
AllieB
October 16, 2024 at 8:09 pm
Awww, honey you’re so uninformed.
Please, don’t believe what you are told. Look it up for yourself from all sides!!
What did Trump do during his first admin that supports all the. Claims made about him?
MHDuuuval
October 16, 2024 at 10:06 pm
DJT first term =Instituted family separation at the border; appointed 3 Supreme Court justices who lied in their confirmation hearings about Roe V. Wade, which they later overturned; and gave the top .01 percent a tax break worth over 2 trillion dollars.
Conservative always
October 16, 2024 at 12:28 pm
Via NY Post:
The Biden-Harris administration has lost track of more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without parents, according to a shocking new report.
Untold numbers of the children — who were released into the US to “qualified sponsors” — are now at risk of sex trafficking, forced labor and other forms of exploitation, a Homeland Security Inspector General’s report released Monday said.
As of May 2024, there are 291,000 migrant children who arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors who were set free and never given a date to appear in immigration court — meaning there is no way to track their whereabouts.
That is in addition to the 32,000 children that Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities released into the US with hearing dates but then failed to show in court, according to the 14-page report — which tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.
One federal whistleblower said that she believes many of these vulnerable kids could already be in the hands of criminals and sex traffickers
PeterH
October 16, 2024 at 1:49 pm
NY Post is as credible a news source as Faux News and The National Enquirer. New Yorkers laugh at the garbage.
MHDuuuval
October 16, 2024 at 2:02 pm
President Joe Biden only entered the White House partway through the period in question. It includes approximately 15 months when Trump was president and does not specify how many children arrived in the U.S. under each president.
But experts say it is a stretch to refer to roughly 300,000 children as “lost” or “missing.”
“This is not a ‘missing kids’ problem; it’s a ‘missing paperwork’ problem,” Jonathan Beier, associate director of research and evaluation for the Acacia Center for Justice’s Unaccompanied Children Program, wrote in an email.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-misinformation-migrant-children-missing-7ab0cea2fd2238346197429e952baa8b
Disgusto
October 16, 2024 at 2:27 pm
Trump’s stated positions (PRO immigration, vet people for criminal backgrounds and know who is in the country, screen for public health risks just like this country ALWAYS used to do) are the exact same using the same language as Bill Clinton in 1995 (cspan) and Obama (I dare you to do your own research). Actually wait, that was Obama who put kids in cages! The only thing that has changed is the Left has normalized criminality and undermined the rule of law that sustained this country since always. Deegan is an international embarrassment and a disgrace. She needs to leave her paid vacation in London and focus on her own flooded city which people are fleeing like rats off a sinking ship. As a child of immigrants, it is we who understand this better than you bloated overprivileged suburban loaves of white bread.
Karoll stokes
October 16, 2024 at 5:14 pm
Exactly!
MHDuuuval
October 16, 2024 at 10:10 pm
(I dare you to do your own research).
In other words: The dog ate YOUR homework.
Obama incarcerated whole families; Trump separated children from parents, essentially kidnapping them.
Michael
October 16, 2024 at 3:40 pm
Actually wait, that was Obama who put kids in cages!
Quoting Trump doesn’t win any points in arguments where intelligent people are present….that can only work at Trump rallies. Informed readers already know that a portion of a warehouse was cordoned off with standard movable construction fencing to keep unaccompanied minors separated until processed.
Your first sentence would be a logical reason to vote for Trump if that represented his immigration policy. However, he also said he would conduct massive deportations of all undocumented…which would include persons entering as far back as the Reagan administration…and surely some of those people have contributed more work and more taxes than belly-aching under-achievers.
My Take
October 16, 2024 at 6:06 pm
Tne camps and term “concentration camp” started I believe in South Africa in the Boer War,, by the English decades before Hitler.
Frankie M.
October 16, 2024 at 9:37 pm
Good to see Ron Salem finally defending his fellow Jews. These comments are outrageous. Trump would never round up illegal immigrants and detain them. He will separate them at the border & put their children in cages. Looks like Deegan said the quiet part out loud. Imagine what would have happened if more people spoke out against Hitler before he took power.
the Truth
October 17, 2024 at 9:15 am
Deegan is a one term mayor,,, now Republicans, lets put up a worthy opponent to her this time? How about Nick Howland!!
MHDuuuval
October 17, 2024 at 3:31 pm
Howlin’ and his BFF coterie Diamond, Freeman, Carrico, and new boy Miller have had plenty to say about nearly everything that has happened since Deegan was sworn in. But nary a word on how to deal with the homeless law made in Tallahassee that puts the entire burden on locals.
That’s real leadership in the Trump/DeSantis era: Put the onus on local folks to pay for whack ideologically driven laws and programs conceived in the capital.
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