Liberal Coalition to American CEOs: Don’t Hire Former Trump Officials

A coalition of left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Popular Democracy, and Proyecto Azteca have sent an open letter to American CEOs, urging them not to hire former Trump administration officials who had a hand in crafting or implementing the president’s immigration policies.

Released just after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was fired by the president for failing to gain control over the border crisis, the letter names and shames 27 current and former administration officials including former ICE Director Tom Homan, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Children were torn away from their parents and placed in cages,” reads the hysterical letter. “It was an image the Trump administration hoped would send a message to migrant families heading north for asylum: if you come here, this could happen to you.

“The cruelty of the policy was matched only by the incompetence of its execution,” it continues. “Administration officials did not keep the records needed for reuniting families, nor did they properly vet employees responsible for looking after these children. Because of their negligence, children have been physically abused. Because of their negligence, children have been sexually assaulted. Because of their negligence, children have died. Their inaction and negligence did not happen in a vacuum. Senior members of the Trump administration played a role, many helping craft, implement, and defend this heinous policy.”

It is, of course, silly beyond words to blame Trump administration officials for whatever real or imagined horrors have been visited upon the children of illegal immigrants. Before we even get into delineating fact from fiction as it pertains to “children in cages” or children being physically abused, let’s get serious: If there is fault to be laid, it is on the parents of these children. They are the ones who knowingly broke the law. They are the ones who put their children in danger. They are the ones who trekked their kids through hundreds of miles of hot, near-desert climate in caravans filled with disease. Jeff Sessions didn’t do it.

The campaign, which also included a full-page ad in Saturday’s New York Times, was created by a group called Restore Public Trust. Its spokesman, Karl Frisch, told Bloomberg that they were sending a warning out to corporations who might think of hiring former Trump officials.

“They need to think twice about what that will mean for their brand to be associating with somebody who is responsible for one of the most horrific policies this administration put forward and that speaks volumes,” said Frisch.

We’re living in sad days when good men and women who try to do something as righteous as enforce the laws of the United States may now find themselves ostracized from the private sector. If this threat actually manifests as an effective blacklist of former Trump officials in corporate America, it will have a chilling effect on our ability to recruit excellent candidates and nominees willing to work in the federal government.

If anything, corporate employers should recognize the courage it took for each of these men and women to buck the Establishment, put themselves through brutal confirmation hearings in many cases, and endure abject vilification by the mainstream media. That’s called character.

Not that any leftist who signed this letter would know anything about that.