On the most recent edition of NBC’s Meet the Depressed, host Kristen Welker tried to guilt-trip Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) over his vote for the Laken Riley Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law. Welker quickly found that Kelly wasn’t going to take the bait:
Watch as Welker gets shut down after trying to cite fellow Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff (CA) in an appeal to authority:
KRISTEN WELKER: President Trump obviously signed the Laken Riley Act into law this week. Just so folks understand, that will allow law enforcement to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who’ve been charged with theft-related crimes. You voted in support of this bill. I had an opportunity to interview your colleague, Senator Adam Schiff, who opposed it. He told me last week that this bill is so broad the U.S., quote, “would be able to deport DREAMers for taking a tube of toothpaste”. Can you guarantee this law won’t be applied in a way that’s overly broad?
MARK KELLY: Well, this law is about public safety. Representing a border state, this affects Arizona, I think, more than other states, just because of, you know, numbers. And it’s, you know, where folks cross. Kristen, if you come across the border and you don’t have documentation, you’ve already committed a crime. This is for somebody who then decides to commit a second crime. And they’re taken into custody, there’ll be due process involved so they can eventually, if they can prove that these are not valid charges where they go through the court system, they could then be released. I’m not concerned about, you know, what Adam is talking about. I think, you know, very highly of DREAMers. DREAMers are as American as my own two kids. I think we should be working towards a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers. I know some of my Republican colleagues feel the same way. And we’re going to solve these border issues by working together, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with policy changes on border security and reform.
Won’t someone think of the poor DREAMers busted for shoplifting hypothetical toothpaste, wails Welker, as she lobbies against an “overly broad” imagined enforcement of the law. And, ultimately, that is the problem that undergirded the need for passage of the Laken Riley Act in the first place. The concern over application of the law now is directly proportional to the media’s lack of concern over the preceding administration’s noncompliance with federal immigration law. In scheme after scheme, not only did the media go along with the Biden administration’s nonenforcement of the law, but they aided and abetted efforts to minimize the impact of Biden’s broken border within our communities.
Kelly wasn’t having any of Welker’s appeal to authority and citation of Schiff. It bears noting that Kelly does not enjoy the luxury of living in a one-party state as does Schiff, and so he dispensed with Schiff’s absurd “what if” scenario.
This isn’t to say that Kelly went total enforcement hawk. He still came out against the current border enforcement raids, against “mass deportations”, and against the use of military aircraft for deportations. Kelly also spoke out in favor of bipartisan “changes on border policy and reform”- code for a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill.
Times, they-have-a changed. Kelly knows it, even if Welker would continue to pretend otherwise.