During an appearance on MS NOW Monday, conservative commentator Matt Lewis raised the prospect of Donald Trump taking over local police departments by paying them off to help out in rounding up immigrants.
Using his Substack column from Sunday as a jumping-off point, Lewis claimed the American public is likely unaware of a program in place that allows local cops to take part in a “Task Force Model” offered by the federal government to supplement and assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“The federal government is reimbursing for the salaries and benefits (including perks like overtime and equipment) for these officers — a financial arrangement that raises the sort of eyebrow-arching questions usually reserved for lobbyists and free steak dinners," he wrote.
“The unspoken point here is that the person who pays you becomes your boss,” he insisted, while adding that there should be concerns about future elections.
Speaking with the co-hosts of “Morning Joe,“ Lewis elaborated that the TFM program has existed for years, but it has exploded under Trump as his DHS agents invaded cities and forcefully started snatching people off the streets.
“It has become, as you can see, just dramatically ramped up,” he noted. “Many, many more local police departments are taking money from ICE to cooperate. And look, maybe you look at this and say cooperation is a good thing. Maybe you look at it and say, there's some perils to this, right? For example, there could be an erosion of trust in local police. Like, if you're an immigrant, are you going to want to cooperate with the local police? But all of those things, I think, are interesting debates for me.”
“My concern, and I don't want to sound conspiratorial here, but, you know, recently Steve Bannon said that ICE should be used during the midterm elections,” he suggested. “If you are concerned that ICE could be a paramilitary, private police of Donald Trump, then I think this takes on kind of an added dimension in terms of its importance.”
“I am blown away that this story is not a bigger deal,” he admitted. “Like in the past week, we have seen states like Virginia and Maryland try to roll back these programs, but most people don't understand the money involved, right? They just think, Virginia, because Virginia elected a Democratic governor, she no longer wants to be complicit with what ICE is doing. She doesn't want her local police to be helping them to round up migrants, some of whom may or may not be illegal.”
“But most people don't know about the money — the fact that ICE is paying for the salaries, the benefits, the equipment, the overtime for these local police officers,” he observed. “What happens is, I’ve grown up believing that whoever pays you money ultimately becomes your boss and you will do what the person paying you money does.
“Some of these local police departments, and I'm sitting here in West Virginia — these small counties, they may not have a lot of tax revenue. They're relying now increasingly on money from ICE. And at a certain point, you do what you're told to do by the people who are paying you and who are funding you,” he warned.