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Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear witness testimony as they ostensibly consider a legislative replacement for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program the Trump administration heartlessly ended聽several weeks ago.

Lawmakers won鈥檛 hear from the CIS figure who has Mexico鈥檚 鈥渨eakness and backwardness has been deeply harmful to the United States鈥� or another who 鈥渂eing hung, drawn, and quartered is probably too good鈥� for President Obama. Nor will it be the organization鈥檚 research director, who at our supposedly 鈥渆quality-obsessed society鈥� and supports limiting legal immigration 鈥渃hildren and grandchildren of immigrants are committing a lot of crime, making this a long-term problem."

Instead, it will be Jessica Vaughan, CIS鈥檚 Director of Policy Studies. Following tomorrow鈥檚 hearing, CIS representatives will have before Congress eleven times since the beginning of 2016. Vaughan will have represented the group on five of those occasions.

Like her colleagues, Vaughan, too, has a history of bigoted public statements and extremist associations. Among other things:

• Vaughan has the humanitarian Temporary Protected Status program for supposedly contributing to 鈥渢he burgeoning street gang problem in the United States.鈥�
• She has praised anti-immigrant sheriff Thomas Hodgson鈥檚 bigoted proposal to send inmates in his Massachusetts prison to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist in constructing Trump鈥檚 border wall. 鈥淚f any of the inmates working on the wall are criminal aliens from south of the border, they鈥檒l be that much closer for deportation,鈥� Vaughan. 鈥淣ot only that, they can use their new skills to support themselves in their home country.鈥�
• Vaughan has with The American Free Press, a virulently anti-Semitic newspaper founded by Willis Carto, a Holocaust denier who was active on the radical right for over five decades before his death in 2015.
• She has also been a featured speaker at multiple extremist events including white nationalist publisher The Social Contract Press鈥檚 annual and the Federation for American Immigration Reform鈥檚. At the Writer鈥檚 Workshop, white nationalist Peter Brimelow of the racist website VDARE also spoke.
• In 1996, Vaughan appeared on an episode of 鈥淏orderline,鈥� a show produced by FAIR, alongside Chilton Williamson, a longtime editor of Chronicles magazine, a publication with strong neo-Confederate ties that caters to the more intellectual wing of the white nationalist movement. 聽

More importantly, however, Vaughan has been integral to CIS鈥檚 poisoning of the immigration debate with misinformation and obfuscation. One prominent example the Center for New Community has previously highlighted is Vaughan and CIS鈥檚. In this area, Vaughan鈥檚 relationship with the truth is particularly egregious. In 2015, CIS published a map listing over 270 jurisdictions as so-called sanctuaries that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Vaughan and her colleagues willfully omitted crucial information regarding the legality of so-called detainer requests federal immigration enforcement agents issue to state and local police. Courts have ruled that honoring such requests can lead to detaining individuals in direct violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.

Vaughan and CIS鈥檚 work in this area has dangerously shifted the terms of public debate away from facts and toward the anecdotal and heuristic. Law enforcement officials in some of the jurisdictions targeted by CIS have objected to sanctuary characterization, clarifying that their actions follow court orders. Vaughan has defended these reckless and dangerous allegations she and her organization have made against law enforcement officials. 鈥淚f being listed as a sanctuary causes people in the community to complain, well, that鈥檚 a good thing,鈥� she told The Washington Times earlier this year. 鈥淭hey should have to explain themselves to the public. That鈥檚 called accountability.鈥� 聽

More troubling, the country鈥檚 top law enforcement official has internalized this incomplete legal analysis. Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with sheriffs this spring. One sheriff in attendance recently The New York Times that Sessions seemed completely unaware of the legal issues surrounding detainer requests. 鈥淗e was still living in 2014,鈥� the sheriff said of Sessions. 鈥淗e had no idea what we were talking about.鈥�

Sessions, of course, has been one of the anti-immigrant movement鈥檚 most strident allies in Washington. Once could expect him to uncritically accept CIS鈥檚 claims, but the fact that the country鈥檚 Attorney General appears unfamiliar with well-known issues with laws he is tasked with enforcing remains deeply troubling.

Tomorrow before Congress, Vaughan is sure to continue deriding the now-ending DACA program, one she has previously described as 鈥渁 huge problem.鈥� Vaughan attacked the program in a new last week published by CIS. Her report positions any potential legislation to regularize the status of DACA beneficiaries as a launch pad for so-called 鈥渃hain migration.鈥�

The concept of chain migration has long been promoted by the anti-immigrant movement to drum up hysteria over immigrants going through legal channels to secure visas for family members. Most people scoff at this reading, rightly acknowledge this as merely how the U.S. immigrant system works. To the anti-immigrant movement, which has preyed on racial anxieties for decades, family reunification presents an existential threat. Never mind the fact that current backlogs mean the process for most would take a decade or longer.

Vaughan鈥檚 record suggests she is sure to continue peddling such fearmongering mistruths before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow. Senators should be ready to countervail her false assertions and misrepresentations before they toxify the immigration policy debate even further, causing additional harm to vulnerable immigrant communities in the process.

Photo credit: SHFWire photo by Luke Torrance