They are emails designed to grab you by the lapels. “CRISIS AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER,” announced one. “MS-13 Is ‘Taking Over the School’ One Teen Warned Before She Was Killed,” read another. The subject lines are always over the top:
“CRIMINAL ALIENS SET FREE BY SANCTUARY CITIES”
“National Security Threats—Chain Migration and the Visa Lottery System”
“‘I wish I had killed more of the mother‐‐‐‐‐‐-,’ says illegal immigrant accused of killing two cops”
“U.S. PERMANENTLY RESETTLED NEARLY 142K BANGLADESHI NATIONALS ON BASIS OF FAMILIAL TIES”
“Previously Deported Mexican National Convicted of Raping 9-Year-Old Girl in Sanctuary City”
These aren’t news blasts from some anti-immigration group or a right-wing news site like Breitbart. They come direct from the White House, sent from an official government email address. They are the work of Kelly Sadler, the “Director of Surrogate & Coalitions Outreach” in the White House communications office. Sadler’s job is to disseminate the White House’s thoughts, views, and talking points to friendly journalists, cable-news pundits, radio and TV hosts and producers, and anyone else who might be willing to put out the administration’s preferred line.
For most of 2017, Sadler and the White House communications staff used its general surrogate list to organize conference calls and blast out emails on every topic from tax reform to national security. But last fall, something changed. Sadler’s emails began to focus almost exclusively on immigration issues, with the recurring theme that America is facing a “crisis.” Since November, she has sent more than 50 emails to the general-surrogate list about immigration, including one nearly every weekday since late January.
An email on March 20 offered an “Immigration Crime News Round Up” for the previous several days. Several emails have focused on the brutal MS-13 Latino gang, and in recent weeks there’s been an emphasis on the proliferation of thousands of unaccompanied alien children in the country.
The result of Sadler’s efforts can best be described as a feedback loop. Her sensationalist headlines make it into conservative media, which the president himself digests and responds to, leading to more sensationalist headlines. On February 21, for instance, she sent out a Washington Examiner story, “MS-13 spreads, fed by 300,000 illegals, DACA recipients, tied to 207 murders,” which promoted a study from the Center for Immigration Studies, a restrictionist organization. That Examiner story was then linked on the Drudge Report and spread through conservative online media. The producers at Fox & Friends seem to have read it, too, because the president’s favorite morning show featured a segment on the issue of MS-13 and an interview with the author of the relevant study, Jessica Vaughan. Minutes after the Fox & Friends segment ran, Trump tweeted about it. “MS-13 gang members are being removed by our Great ICE and Border Patrol Agents by the thousands, but these killers come back in from El Salvador, and through Mexico, like water. El Salvador just takes our money, and Mexico must help MORE with this problem. We need The Wall!”
Sadler’s emails feature the same sort of language that Trump-friendly media, from Fox News to the depths of the alt-right blogosphere, are using to describe the most recent flashpoint in the immigration debate: a caravan of 1,200 or so Central Americans moving its way into Mexico and, possibly, to the southwest border of the United States. On April 3, the president himself tweeted about the march.
“The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our ‘Weak Laws’ Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!” he wrote.
One day later, the administration announced a presidential memorandum authorizing the deployment of the National Guard to assist border agents along the border with Mexico and a renewed push for border-enforcement legislation.
It’s unclear who at the White House is behind the communications strategy. Sadler herself says she is not authorized to speak to reporters, and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not answer questions about the email blasts. Republicans on Capitol Hill say the subjects are reminiscent of the interests of Stephen Miller, the former aide to Alabama senator Jeff Sessions who helped marshal opposition to comprehensive immigration reform efforts in 2013 and who is now one of the most powerful aides in the West Wing.
Miller is the most conversant—and combative—White House adviser on immigration issues. He conducted a press briefing last August in which he battled reporters over immigration statistics and accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of advocating a policy of “unfettered, uncontrolled migration” and open borders. After an abortive interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in January, Miller went to a friendlier host, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, and joked that if he “was a member of MS-13 here illegally, [CNN] would be clamoring to get me into the voting booth.”
Sadler’s emails routinely sex-up federal agency press releases. An April 2 email read, “CRISIS AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER | ICE: 99 MS-13 Gang Members Arrested in Latest Enforcement Operation Entered Country As Unaccompanied Alien Minors.” This was a far from accurate representation of the accompanying Department of Homeland Security press release. What DHS announced was the arrest of 24 gang members in New York as part of an ongoing interagency program to tamp down on transnational gangs that draw their membership from immigrants. Those 99 unaccompanied minors arrested? That was over the program’s 10-month existence, which was part of a nationwide enforcement operation against gang activity that claims to have made more than 3,200 immigration arrests since 2012. A robust law enforcement effort combining federal and state and local resources to deal with a serious problem, yes, but is it part of a crisis?
Immigration has crowded out all other concerns for Sadler’s office. After the February 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, for instance, Sadler provided no talking points on the president’s message on gun violence. As Congress and the country debated measures over the next several days, Trump surrogates were sent news articles that “prove why we need immigration reform NOW.” On February 23, the day after an emotional and well-received meeting in the White House between Parkland families and the president, Sadler sent out a poll showing “overwhelming support for President Trump’s immigration priorities.”
On March 1, the administration announced steel and aluminum tariffs, but conservative surrogates got little direction from the White House about the presidential thinking. A March 5 email from Sadler highlighted a story out of San Diego: “Mexican man assumes American’s identity for 37 years, steals $361,000 in government benefits.” And a couple of weeks later, as Congress pushed through a giant spending bill that President Trump would end up reluctantly signing, Sadler was blasting out stories like this one, from March 21: “Illegals who escaped after Oakland mayor’s alert already committed new crimes, ICE chief says.”
A White House led by a mercurial and unpredictable president was always going to be a communications challenge. West Wing officials have the near impossible task of crafting a coherent message with Trump’s itchy Twitter finger always just over their shoulder. Immigration enforcement may simply be the only area where the White House can push out a consistent message. That’s another sort of crisis.
Michael Warren is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
