For more than a decade, Rosemary Jenks has walked the halls of Congress, cultivating relationships with elected officials and their staff while lobbying to stifle any proposed legislation that supports immigrant rights or a pathway to citizenship for immigrants. As a former CIS analyst and the director of government relations for NumbersUSA, Jenks has worked for years to make life as difficult as possible for immigrants living in the U.S. and to prevent future entries.
About
- Rosemary Jenks is the Director of Government Relations for NumbersUSA. In this role, Jenks serves as a primary link between the anti-immigrant movement’s grassroots base and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
- Prior to joining NumbersUSA in 2001, Jenks worked as a senior fellow and legislative analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
- In her roles at CIS and NumbersUSA, Jenks worked alongside a number of key anti-immigrant figures, including Roy Beck, Mark Krikorian, Jessica Vaughan and Steven Camarota.
Anti-immigrant Views
- Jenks is not shy about her ties to former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who previously received support from white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. At a lobbying event in Washington, which former Rep. Tancredo attended, Jenks announced that if anyone was looking for her, they could find her in the offices of Representative Tancredo, where she and Linda Purdue (who has long worked with Tanton) were “virtual staffers.”
- In 2006, Jeff Sessions participated in a CIS event featuring Jenks.
- Jenks is a close associate of anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney. Since 2010, Jenks has been a guest on Gaffney’s radio program multiple times. Jenks also contributed to Gaffney’s 2013 book, “War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World” and has spoken at multiple events organized by Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.
- During a 2010 anti-immigrant rally in Phoenix, Arizona, Jenks lauded former State Sen. Russell Pearce for his efforts to pass Arizona’s bigoted SB 1070. In 2008, she spoke at the Social Contract Press’s Annual Writers Workshop. The Social Contract Press (TSCP) was founded in 1990 by John Tanton, who served as editor for its journal known for featuring white nationalist writers, and most infamously in 1994 republished an English translation of the openly racist novel The Camp of the Saints.
Anti-immigrant Activity
- Jenks works closely with key anti-immigrant representatives in the House, including Rep. Steve King, Rep. Louie Gohmert, and former Rep. Lamar Smith, and serves as one of NumbersUSA’s main contacts with the U.S. Congress and state legislative officials.
- In addition to spending millions of dollars on radio and television ads, from 2001-2018 Jenks’s employer spent over $7M in lobbying dollars, and from May 2018 to August 2019 the group spent nearly $900,000 on Facebook ads attacking immigrants.
- NumbersUSA has an unprecedented amount of power and influence over President Trump’s immigration policy, and the results have been disastrous. Perhaps most notably is NumbersUSA’s work to end DACA and derail permanent protections for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. at a young age. In addition to publicly pressuring President Trump to end the program, NumbersUSA spent over a million dollars working to derail bipartisan talks on protections for these immigrants.
- Ahead of a vote on H.R. 6, the Dream and Promise Act, NumbersUSA urged their supporters and members of Congress, including some Democrats to vote against the measure. The group placed Facebook ads targeting a number of moderate Democratic representatives including some freshman members.
- In 2012, NumbersUSA coordinated with former IRLI lawyer Kris Kobach on the Crane v. Napolitano case, the suit that pitted ICE against President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and set the stage for United States v. Texas, and the subsequent legal attacks the program has faced. The same day Kobach filed the lawsuit on behalf of the ten Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, NumbersUSA announced that it would financially support the legal effort against DACA. In a blog post that read more as a fundraising appeal than an announcement, Beck said the ICE agents’ legal team would be “funded entirely by NumbersUSA member contributions.”
- The group has used its grassroots network to drive calls and send faxes to lawmakers under both the Obama and Trump Administrations, urging representatives to support policies and amendments attached to must-pass bills offered by anti-immigrant Representatives in the House and Senate. Policy proposals have ranged from removing work authorization from DACA recipients to forbidding undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. at a young age from serving in the military, rescinding the program altogether and deporting DACA recipients to harsh interior enforcement policies such as mandatory e-verify. They have also stridently supported ending birthright citizenship, dramatic cuts to legal immigration, including ending family based immigration, and increased border wall funding.