The pro-censorship post was quite the Freudian slip from the Trump administration.
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The Trump administration insists that its crackdown on pro-Palestinian students is not an attack on freedom of thought. “This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in defense of detaining Columbia University protest spokesman Mahmoud Khalil in March.
But on Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that its job was to stop ideas along with people. “If it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it’s our job to stop it. People. Money. Products. Ideas,” said the since-deleted social media graphic.
Afterthestatementsparkedanuproar,ICEquicklyclaimedthatitwasamistake.“Thatpostwassentwithoutproperapprovalandshouldneverhavebeenshared,”ICEMediaOperationsUnitChiefMikeAlvareztellsReasonviaemail.“‘Ideas’shouldhavesaid‘intellectualproperty.'”
Mistakeornot,thepostreflectstheTrumpadministration’sphilosophythatfreespeechs
