A local official who visited the White House along with dozens of other law enforcement officials was surprised to learn that the group that paid for his trip has been accused of having ties to white nationalists, pro-eugenics research and promoting bigotry toward immigrants.
The group, called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, confirmed that it paid approximately $1,100 for Bartholomew County Sheriff Matt Myers to attend a White House briefing on drugs and border security, said group spokesman Matthew Tragesser.
Myers was one of around 200 sheriffs from around the country who attended the briefing on Sept. 26, which included a photo-op with President Donald Trump and panel discussions with high-ranking Trump administration officials, including Kellyanne Conway, assistant to the president and senior counselor.
FAIR paid for six sheriffs from Indiana to attend the event, Tragesser said.
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Fair describes itself as a "non-profit and non-partisan organization" that seeks to eliminate illegal immigration and drastically reduce legal immigration to "allow America to more sensibly manage its growth, address its environmental needs and maintain a high quality of life," according to the group’s website.
The group, however, has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League, which has said FAIR’s "anti-immigration stance is based on a bigoted representation of immigrants," and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has classified FAIR as a "hate group" since 2008 for, among other things, accepting money from a pro-eugenics fund and promoting the "hatred of immigrants, especially non-white ones."
Myers said he did "a little research" on the group before accepting the money, including visiting the group’s website, but did not find any evidence that FAIR was "targeting a certain group of people."
Myers said he attended the briefing to talk about drug enforcement, which he said has been the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department’s "number one issue since I became sheriff."
"My concern is more toward the drug enforcement, not so much the immigration issues," Myers said.
Myers acknowledged that he was not aware of the reports about the group by the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League, or numerous news reports about the group in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.
"Obviously, I wouldn’t belong to a hate group or anything like that, but I didn’t see any type of indications (on FAIR’s website) that this was a group that is targeting a certain group of people," Myers said. "I think they’re looking at overall immigration."
"I find it hard to believe that the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association and the National Sheriffs’ Association and the White House would have anything to do with a hate group," Myers added.
Tragesser brushed aside the Southern Poverty Law Center’s classification as an attempt to "close down the debate" on immigration and "silence" FAIR’s political agenda. When asked about the Anti-Defamation League’s criticism, he said, "FAIR’s 40-year record speaks for itself."
Founded in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a non-profit watchdog that tracks hate groups and other extremists in the United States.
The law center defines "hate group" as any organization that "has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable traits," according to its website.
The law center’s definition of a hate group mirrors the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s definition of a hate crime.
The Anti-Defamation League is an international organization that has tracked antisemitism and other forms of hate around the world, including in the United States, since 1913.
About the trip
Myers said he was in Washington, D.C. from Sept. 24 to 26. The Sept. 26 briefing at the White House included two panel discussions. Myers said he spoke during both panels.
“I let the panels know that even though I’m a sheriff in the Midwest, in Indiana, a weak border is a danger to our community just as much as it is to a community that actually sits on the border because of the drugs that are coming in,” Myers said he told Conway during the briefing.
Myers said he also met with Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana; Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana; and Rep. Greg Pence, R-Indiana, to talk about, among other things, border security along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"I by no means went (to Washington, D.C.) with the idea of coming back and saying, ‘All right, if you’re undocumented and you’re in Bartholomew County, we’re going to go out and arrest you,’" Myers said. "Obviously, that’s not our job. That’s the (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents’ job. If they call and need help, obviously, we’ll help them. But that is not our primary responsibility, that’s theirs."
"What we do locally now is if we arrest anyone from another country, we will contact ICE and let them know, and they will make a decision on whether they will come and get them," Myers said. "…In other words, we aren’t arresting anybody from a foreign country unless we have a local charge."
Tragesser said the purpose of funding Myers’ trip to Washington, D.C. was for him hear from Trump administration officials on "border security and immigration enforcement issues."
"They heard from top-level administration officials and not FAIR. The reason FAIR sponsored the event is because many sheriff departments do not have funding for this type of educational experience," Tragesser said.
Myers said the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association notified him of the White House briefing and that FAIR was going to fund the trip.
The Indiana Sheriffs’ Association did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment about the trip.
Controversy surrounding FAIR
FAIR has repeatedly been accused of reducing illegal immigration to a racial and demographic struggle.
The Anti-Defamation League has said FAIR’s website “alleges a causal relationship between immigration and American societal ills, including crime rates, environmental degradation and wage stagnation," according to its 2018 report, "Mainstreaming Hate: The Anti-Immigrant Movement in the U.S."
The Anti-Defamation League further states in the report that the group is one of several in the United States that "play a major role in promoting divisive, dangerous rhetoric and views that demonize immigrants."
The Southern Poverty Law Center goes a few steps further, classifying FAIR as a “hate group.”
To support its conclusion, the law center points to the views of current FAIR President Dan Stein, the acceptance of money from a pro-eugenics fund and decades of “friendly correspondence” between the group’s founder, John Tanton, and individuals the law center describes as “leading white nationalist thinkers.”
Tanton, who died this past July at the age of 85, warned of a “Latin onslaught” and wrote of the need for “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that," the law center states.
The Southern Poverty Law Firm also has said FAIR accepted money from the Pioneer Fund, a group that, according to The New York Times, has reported “embraced eugenics” and funded research into eugenics, race and intelligence.
Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that advocate for controlled selective breeding of humans to improve, in the practitioners’ eyes, the human gene pool.
In 2009, Stein called Tanton "a Renaissance man" and, in 2011, said Tanton was "a person with extraordinary persistence in promoting ideas based on a careful analysis of how today’s decisions affect the future," according to The New York Times.
"We’ve always said you should not discriminate on the basis of race," Stein said in 2011.
FAIR has denied that it in any way endorses hate or bigotry.
"The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) maliciously and falsely has attempted to close down the debate on a wide variety of issues by using the term ‘hate group’ to silence nearly every political agenda they oppose," Tragesser said.
Myers declined to comment on the reports about FAIR because "I haven’t seen them."
"I’m not going to comment on those (reports)," Myers said, adding, "I don’t think the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association or the National Sheriffs’ Association or the White House is going to support any type of a hate group. If they were (to support a hate group), that would be a major problem."
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For more information about the Federation for American Immigration Reform, visit fairus.org.
Anti-Defamation League report: https://www.adl.org/the-anti-immigrant-movement-in-the-us#profiles-of-anti-immigrant-groups
Southern Poverty Law Firm: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/federation-american-immigration-reform
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