In what is sure to be another devastating blow to minority rights under the Trump administration, Donald Trump has chosen a woman named Cameron Quinn to head civil rights at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Since we know that all of Trump’s picks are wholly unqualified to do the jobs they’ve been given, it is unsurprising that Quinn is no exception. She has zero background in civil rights or national security. She is, however, a Republican lawyer who has made a career out of suppressing the votes of minorities.
Quinn’s track record in election law has drawn criticism from Democrats and earned her a reputation as a Republican activist. She has been involved in Republican efforts to push the unproven narrative that voter fraud is a widespread threat that must be combated with restrictive voting laws, such as voter ID requirements. These measures have repeatedly been found to disproportionately reduce voting among minority, poor, and elderly citizens.
Republicans have an obsession with preventing people from voting. The very party that claims to defend liberty and democracy has spent decades pushing the myth of widespread voter fraud in order to pass unnecessary voter ID laws which curb the black and brown vote. No one is more obsessed with this than Trump. Since losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, he has done everything he can to fill his administration with conservative lawyers and activists who have made it their life’s work to deny people their voting rights. This appointment is a revenge of sorts to get back at the millions of minorities who didn’t vote for him. Sadly, it’s also incredibly dangerous: Quinn’s new role will allow her to take a key role in policies which have a critical impact on the same communities she has worked hard to disenfranchise.
Many of the Trump administration’s most controversial priorities are overseen by DHS—most recently the termination of the Dreamer program, in addition to the aggressive push to deport undocumented immigrants and the ban on travel from six majority-Muslim countries. As a result, the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties could have an outsize impact on the government’s handling of minority rights. Quinn could rescind or help create policies with substantial implications for immigrants and minorities, although the influence of her office will depend on the extent to which the DHS secretary—currently Acting Secretary Elaine Duke—decides to include it in agency decision-making. [...]
“This administration is clearly setting the stage for a massive voter purge, so it’s obviously concerning that someone with a partisan background in elections and voting is being installed in a key civil rights position at DHS,” Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and formerly the head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, said in a statement to Mother Jones.
Quinn is super chummy with Hans von Spakovsky, who is spearheading Trump’s ridiculous Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity—the group Trump appointed to look into his lie that “millions” of illegal voters cast a vote for Hillary in 2016. The commission wants to review data, such as naturalization forms from DHS, to identify non-citizen voters. Except this is completely illegal and violates privacy laws. But with Quinn now embedded at DHS, it is a real possibility that a sharing of information between DHS and the election commission could occur—whether its legal or not.
Quinn’s turbulent legacy in Fairfax County [where she was the general registrar for elections] and her history of advocating for voter ID laws have raised questions about how she’ll handle oversight of an office with a broad civil rights portfolio. “We’re talking about TSA, we’re talking about ICE, we’re talking about lots of places where racial profiling is an issue,” [John Farrell, former general counsel for the Fairfax County Democratic Committee says]. “Am I worried about that? Yeah. Yeah, it’s something to be worried about.”
All of Trump’s appointments are terrifying because they are people with long histories of causing harm to marginalized communities. And they are all being given prominent positions at agencies (Department of Justice, Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security) that we rely on most for our well-being and protection. Though he is no longer in the White House, Steve Bannon has already completed his mission of helping Trump to deconstruct the administrative state. And we are all going to be so much worse off because of it.