President Donald Trump's top bureaucrat in charge of the U.S. state-run international broadcasting service known as Voice of America has a new goal, The Atlantic reported on Tuesday — deport employees who formerly worked for that agency.
Lake, a former news anchor from the Phoenix area and multiple-time failed candidate for higher office in Arizona, did everything in her power to shutter the agency she was put in charge of — and how, wrote Toluse Olurunnipa, "Her latest targets are J-1 visa holders who worked for Voice of America ... in part because they embody a trifecta of triggers for Trump’s ire — they are federal employees, they are immigrants, and they are journalists."
She has been making these threats in a series of interviews given to right-wing talk show hosts — one of the most recent being with Eric Bolling of Real America's Voice.
“Their time here is up. And I said before, if I have to go to the airport with them, and accompany them to the airport and get them on the flight, I will do that,” she said. She went on to laugh at Bolling's idea that they could be locked up in the controversial Florida Everglades detention camp known as "Alligator Alcatraz." “If you overstay your visa, ICE is going to find you. And they will find you in this case as well.”
This comes after Lake has worked to dismantle the broadcast services under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the report noted.
"Lake has moved with speed to decimate VOA and independent broadcasters that receive government funding, including Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks," said the report. "Shortly after Trump’s March 14 executive order to close down her agency, she placed almost all of VOA’s staff on administrative leave, fired hundreds of contractors, and ended programming throughout much of the world. For the first time since VOA was founded, in 1942, to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II, the network went dark in March."
The closure of Voice of America and its related broadcasters has been subject to extensive litigation. A federal judge ordered services to be restored, and last month, slammed the Trump administration for largely ignoring the order and only restoring a small fraction of the required broadcasting.