Thread: Gubernatorial candidate Kobach connects 9/11 to immigration

BY TAL AXELROD - 10/06/18 09:14 PM EDT



Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach cited the September 11 terrorist attacks at a campaign rally in Topeka in arguing for tougher immigration policies.

Kobach, the Republican nominee for governor in the state known for his hardline stance on immigration, made the remarks at a rally in Topeka with President Trump.

“I was there during 9/11 and we all remember how the world changed but let me tell you something that you may not know. All 19 hijackers came into this country legally on temporary visas. Five of them became illegal mostly by overstaying their visas. Four of those five were stopped by state and local law enforcement for speeding violations. They were illegally at the country at the time, but the cops didn’t know it, so they didn’t make an arrest even though they could have if they had that information at their fingertips,” he said.

“Now get this. Three of those four illegal aliens that they could have arrested were pilots. So if they had made those arrests, they could have stopped 9/11 from happening. Those numbers have shaped my career. The gravity of that has never left me. I will not, and I know President Trump will not allow our immigration system to be used again as a weapon to harm the American people. Stopping illegal aliens is not just about jobs, it’s not just about crime, it’s about our nation’s security and that comes first,” Kobach added.

Kobach, who has in the past said immigrants commit a disproportionate amount of crimes contrary to available data, also served as vice chairman of the Trump administration’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which was designed to investigate claims of voter fraud.

The Commission was disbanded in January.

Kobach has cited controversial statistics citing a high number of instances of voter fraud and supported Trump’s claim that “millions of people” voted illegally for Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has been a proponent of tightened voter ID laws and connected voter fraud to undocumented immigrants.

“Photo ID creates trust in our elections. If you need photo ID to cash a check or to buy the kind of Sudafed that works, you probably ought to need one to cast a vote in an election. And proof of citizenship too. Every time an alien votes, every time an alien votes, it cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” he said.

“You know the Democrats and their socialist friends, they claim they care about voter cancellation or voter suppression. But they don’t care about U.S. citizens’ votes being cancelled out,” Kobach added.

There is no legitimate evidence to suggest that voter fraud is widespread.

Kobach defeated the more mainstream incumbent Governor Jeff Colyer in the Republican primary earlier this year. Republicans feared Kobach’s extreme views would put the usually safe Republican seat in play and that Colyer had a better chance of defeating Democratic candidate state Senator Laura Kelly.

The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss up.”

Kobach received Trump’s endorsement earlier this year, who told Kansans Kansans Saturday night to “go out and vote for my friend Kris Kobach on Election Day please.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...to-immigration

I thought that was a very important and informative part of Kobach's speech at the Rally tonight.