Why Was the CBP Commissioner at Hegseth’s Meeting of Generals?
Cohesion between federal agencies and the military to target migrants and other nonwhite groups makes this another alarming observation
A source familiar with the event tells me that Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Rodney Scott attended the pep rally for military generals announcing “sweeping reforms” in the U.S. military. The meeting was held by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump on Tuesday. I reached out to the White House and CBP for confirmation about Scott’s attendance and sought information regarding his agenda. The White House did not deny his presence but deferred to CBP. I have received no response from the agency as of this article’s publication.
Perspective
To put Scott’s attendance into perspective, it’s worth remembering that Scott was found to have been a member of a violent and racist Facebook group in 2020, along with the previous CBP chief and dozens of other CBP agents, including many in leadership positions. His views complement Hegseth’s obsession with the border and equating migrants with invasion, criminality, and terrorism. One only has to reference the latter’s white Christian nationalist beliefs alongside those of many other members of the White House to draw basic connections.
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Looking a little deeper highlights the white nationalist positions on immigration that are the foundation for the superiority complex often boasted about by Hegseth, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, and many others, such as Border Czar Tom Homan. Similarly, last week, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau participated in a panel on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) titled, “Global Refugee Asylum System: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It.”
Landau’s focus was on redefining asylum and who can claim it. His commentary reeked of belief in the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, much like his colleagues.
“Migration, I think, is going to be one of the defining topics of the 21st century, whether we like it or not. It was, in some ways, a defining topic of the 20th century as well,” said Landau. “There were massive population shifts in the 20th century. And the United Nations actually played a role in that, usually in creating international mechanisms to assist migratory flows, to help nations create asylum and refugee systems.”
While he suggests the U.N. is responsible for migration from the Global South, this is a blanket accusation that fits both the European narrative that suggests Muslims are funding migrants going to Western countries and the U.S. narrative that argues Jewish people are paying migrants to come to the United States. These baseless narratives are designed to take the attention off of the West being responsible for mass migrations due to its collective oppressive policies. Strategies focused not on spreading democracy, but on stealing resources and wealth.
“I think the first step in dealing with any pathology is to acknowledge you have a problem,” Landau continued. “I think this is, again, not just a United States problem. We’re seeing this all over the world. That is not to say, frankly, that there are no real asylum seekers. But I think, frankly, if you have hundreds of thousands of fake asylum seekers, what happens to the real asylum seekers? They get lost in the midst of a massive bureaucratic process.”
Landau’s mission was clear. The White House is asking the rest of the world to redefine asylum and be more stringent to meet its white nationalist demands. His use of “fake asylum seekers,” a talking point of the far-right, to justify the narrative speaks volumes. Luckily, very few countries participated in these events in what he himself referred to as “the margins” of UNGA.
Invasion
For Hegseth and Scott, the border is akin to a war zone, a narrative they have been promoting for years. With talk of plans to conduct attacks inside Mexico and starting a war with Venezuela, both countries with perceived ties to immigration and drug trafficking, it’s no wonder Hegseth continues to promote “untying the hands of war fighters,” as he did when he sought unilateral power to conduct drone strikes in February, a responsibility belonging to the president.
Was Scott present for what can be perceived as possible lobbying on behalf of Hegseth to sell generals on the “invasion” idea? Was he there to help get generals in line on the mass deportation agenda? Regardless, his presence raises many questions, and the White House, including the Secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security (CBP’s parent agency) and the Department of War, should be willing to answer them.
With CBP previously being used to target protesters in 2020 alongside their more recent crowd control training, and Trump saying dangerous cities should be used as “training grounds for the military,” it may not be surprising to see Scott present at Hegseth’s lackluster pep rally. However, it represents the escalation against Black people and Latinos under the guise of immigration enforcement that we continue to see with Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and the communities he’s sending them to. When Trump told generals that they should be prepared to “fight an enemy from within,” he essentially said the quiet part out loud.
Watch Hegseth/Trump Pep Rally
Watch Landau’s Speech at UNGA
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They said enough when they outright stated that America would be the new military training ground. Gaza, Africa, Ukraine, and the rest of the Global South were/are just expeditions.