On Thursday, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared that the seemingly official fliers, which have been appearing in Washington, were not sanctioned or issued by them. The fliers warn residents in a ‘sanctuary city’ neighborhood not to harbor undocumented immigrants and to report them to immigration authorities.
The white and blue fliers, bearing the department’s logo, started to appear in the southwest of the city yesterday. They offer a seemingly credible 800 number, on which callers were invited to leave messages about immigrant ‘fugitives’ and human smuggling, as well as several other options. Jenny L Burke, the press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, says the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was not responsible for the creation or distribution of the fliers.
Mayor, Muriel Bowser, had earlier reached the same conclusion, using Twitter to inform residents that the fliers were a hoax, and would be removed as soon as possible. The Thursday briefing from DHS press secretary, David Lapan, also announced the creation of a new program to enable overseas visitors worried about overstaying their US visas to determine their legal status on the internet.
Lapan also noted that last week’s decision by John Kelly, the Secretary of the DHS, to give a six-month extension to the temporary protected status of the 60,000 Haitians who escaped the earthquake in 2010 was done to emphasize the temporary nature of the program and that another extension was unlikely.