Homeland Security Investigations says critics of the president now fall within its jurisdiction, days after agents searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington home before dawn.
Homeland Security Investigations has ruled that criticising the president counts as unauthorised residence in the national conversation, days after agents searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home before dawn. Critics will be asked to produce presidential consent for every opinion held since January. A hardware shop near the Capitol has already run out of deadbolts.
A hardware shop four blocks from the Capitol sold its last deadbolt before lunch on Thursday. Nineteen House offices had sent staff for them before the morning votes, the manager said. Nobody asked which party. Nobody needed to.
The rush followed a notice from Homeland Security Investigations, the agency that searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home this week while the street was still dark. The notice declares that anyone "residing in the national conversation without presidential authorisation" is now an immigration matter. Critics, it explains, are present in the discourse without papers.
One has seen this film. 1971, a list typed up in the West Wing, a single word in capitals across the top. The remake has better lighting and worse dialogue, which is the usual trade.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Rosalind Teague briefed reporters in a corridor, since the room had been double-booked. "The president did not invite these opinions into the country's conversation," she said. "They arrived unannounced and they have been working here ever since. Our agents are simply checking their status." Asked whether an elected member of Congress has a right to disagree with the executive, she said that was a question for the courts, "once the courts have been processed".
The notice sets out a procedure of some care. Agents will call between five and six in the morning, because "the conversation is quietest then". The resident must produce written presidential consent for every opinion held since January. Opinions lacking consent will be removed and returned to their place of origin, which the department admits it has not yet located.
"We are not silencing anyone. We are asking them to hold their views through the proper channels, and the proper channels are currently closed." — Rosalind Teague, Homeland Security Investigations
Anyone who remembers the winter of 1919 will know the hour, the knock and the paperwork. The agency has not read that chapter. Agencies never do. It is the one thing they share with sequels.
Everett Lindqvist, who teaches constitutional law in Baltimore, noted a wrinkle. Omar said after the search that she will not be silenced. Under the notice, he said, that is a second offence. "Refusing to be silenced is continued unauthorised presence. They have made defiance a residency violation. It is tidy. It is also madness, but it is tidy."
The department confirmed it has no plans to visit the homes of the president's supporters. Their opinions, Teague said, "have documentation". She did not say who issued it. She did not have to.
Back at the hardware shop, the manager was restocking. He expected a second rush once the Senate read its mail. Every government eventually reaches the chapter where it audits what its own citizens think. The ending is printed on the last page, and nobody in office ever reads that far.
