ICE agents who are violently rounding up children from playgrounds and parents from city streets are “doing the Lord’s work,” according to U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican from Ohio.
His comments came three weeks after White House staffer Stephen Miller, architect of the Trump administration’s harsh immigrant deportation program, told a group of evangelicals, “We are on the side of God.”
Repeatedly, President Donald Trump and his allies claim they are inspired by “biblical values” as they reduce international aid, cut funding for food programs and target legal immigrants in the country as though they were criminals.
Jordan said it plainly Sunday, Oct. 12, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Speaking to host Dana Bash, he said: “I think the ICE agents are doing the Lord’s work. They’re doing what the president promised the American people he was going to do when he ran for the job and was elected in a big way.
“So, I think they’re doing their duty. What’s interesting is the pushback they’re getting in these sanctuary jurisdictions and these ICE-free zones, where many times they’re coming to — they’ve sent a detainer to the facility, and they will release the person to the streets, the bad guy to the streets, and won’t work with ICE at all.”
Jordan’s comments came just days after a video went viral of ICE agents shooting a Presbyterian pastor in Chicago with pepper spray at close range while he prayed at a protest site.
The Ohio representative dismissed the video as untruthful: “What this clipped video doesn’t show is that these agitators were blocking an ICE vehicle from leaving the federal facility — impeding operations.”
Eyewitnesses at the scene have said Trump administration denials of attacking the pastor are outright lies.
Controversy is nothing new for Jordan, who has been ardent supporter of Trump and was among those who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Asked by Anderson Cooper in April 2018 whether he had ever heard Trump tell a lie, Jordan said “I have not” and “nothing comes to mind.” He also said, “I don’t know that (Trump has ever) said something wrong that he needs to apologize for.”
On January 11, 2021 — five days after the January 6 insurrection — Trump awarded Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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