Kari Lake's Attempt to Deport Her Own Employees

The Atlantic

3 days ago

After rushing to shut down the government-funded media outlets she was tapped to lead, Kari Lake has launched on a mission so strange that it is perhaps unprecedented: She is trying to force her own employees out of the country.
Lake has been making the rounds on right-wing media in recent weeks to pitch herself as a devoted enforcer of President Donald Trump's broader agenda. Her latest targets are J-1 visa holders who worked for Voice of America. Obscure to most Americans, they have attracted Lake's attention in part because they embody a trifecta of triggers for Trump's ire—they are federal employees, they are immigrants, and they are journalists.
And in Lake's telling—which distorts the facts in pursuit of a more provocative narrative—they are national-security threats worthy of the same kind of rough handling that Trump has encouraged for suspected Venezuelan gang members.
'Their time here is up. And I said before, if I have to go to the airport with them, and accompany them to the airport and get them on the flight, I will do that,' Lake, a former journalist herself, told Eric Bolling of the right-wing TV channel Real America's Voice last month. Bolling responded by suggesting that the journalists could be sent to 'Alligator Alcatraz,' Florida's new massive migrant-detention center in the Everglades. Lake began to laugh before saying, 'If you overstay your visa, ICE is going to find you. And they will find you in this case as well.'
Eric Schlosser: 'We voted for retribution'
The Trump administration's anti-immigrant fervor has come to Voice of America, which for years has recruited journalists from all over the world to broadcast the American point of view globally. Some of those reporters face likely persecution or imprisonment if they are deported to their home nations after having worked for the United States government.
Since landing at the U.S. Agency for Global Media—the federal parent of Voice of America—in February, Lake has moved with speed to decimate VOA and independent broadcasters that receive government funding, including Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Shortly after Trump's March 14 executive order to close down her agency, she placed almost all of VOA's staff on administrative leave, fired hundreds of contractors, and ended programming throughout much of the world.
For the first time since VOA was founded, in 1942, to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II, the network went dark in March. In some parts of the world, viewers wondered if the blank screens meant a coup had taken place in the U.S., Steve Herman, who recently retired from VOA after a 20-year career, told me.
In her public comments, Lake has described Voice of America—once hailed bipartisanly as a prime example of U.S. soft power—as 'rotten to the core' and 'a serious threat to our national security.' Its destruction has been so swift and debilitating that few of the former VOA journalists and executives I spoke with think it can ever recover the level of international influence it once had. Today, only a few dozen people work at the agency, down from more than 1,300 before Trump retook office. VOA has downsized from broadcasting in almost 50 languages to just a handful. During the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran in June, which culminated in U.S. strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, VOA had to ask dozens of staffers to return to work and restart the Persian news division's broadcasts.
The sudden downfall of VOA will have long-term and unknown impact on America's foreign policy, yet it has had more immediate consequences for dozens of J-1 visa holders who had worked as translators and broadcasters in languages including Mandarin, Indonesian, and Bangla. As a condition of their visas, they had to remain employed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or depart the U.S. within 30 days.
Some have already left. Others are making asylum claims. A few quickly got married or began considering enrolling in school to avoid being sent back to countries where they may not be welcome.
Their plight showcases how Trump's mass-deportation agenda has morphed beyond its original contours. Although the president campaigned on a pledge to deport 'the worst of the worst'—the gang members and criminals Trump has claimed foreign governments purposefully sent to infiltrate America's southern border—Lake is targeting multilingual professionals who had been actively recruited by the U.S. to help counter propaganda from hostile nations.
'In many ways, they're exactly the people you want,' Chase Untermeyer, who served as VOA's director under President George H. W. Bush, told me. By sending them out of the country, the U.S. is giving space to governments in China, North Korea, and Iran to fill the void on the global information battlefield, he said. 'It's extraordinarily short-sighted and seen in the context of so much else of what the administration has been doing to eliminate foreign aid and reduce the State Department.'
For years, VOA relied on the J-1 visa program, a cultural-exchange initiative that brings 300,000 foreigners—including au pairs and visiting medical doctors—to the U.S. annually. After spending up to three years reporting in the United States, many VOA journalists on J-1 visas have been able to pursue a green card and eventually become citizens.
That was the path Sabir Mustafa thought he was on after working for more than a year as the managing editor for VOA Bangla, the U.S. public broadcaster for Bangladesh. But on March 6, as he was working at the Washington, D.C., headquarters, he was given a letter that said the agency had determined that his role was 'not a national security or mission critical position.' He was being terminated immediately, the letter said. He was asked to hand over his badge and was escorted out of the building by security. A few months short of completing his two-year probationary period, he had little recourse to try to keep his job, he told me.
Tom Nichols: They're cheering for Trump in Moscow—again
Because he was on a J-1 visa, his termination started a 30-day countdown in which he would need to settle his affairs in the U.S. and leave the country. If he overstayed his visa, he faced the prospect of being accosted by masked officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who around the same time had begun snatching foreign students off the street and flying migrants suspected of gang affiliation to an El Salvador megaprison.
'You either leave within those 30 days, or you are in violation of the law,' Mustafa told me. 'And nobody wants to be in violation of the law.'
He knew that he had to leave, and unlike some of his colleagues, he's a citizen of a stable, safe country that happens to be a U.S. ally: the United Kingdom. He quickly began selling his furniture, paid to break his lease, and boarded a U.S.-funded flight back to London exactly 30 days after receiving his termination letter. Mustafa said his decision to leave was an easy one, but that was not the case for others. WhatsApp and Signal groups sprung up in which hundreds of VOA journalists offered resources and support to their J-1 colleagues, and the group hired an immigration lawyer to help.
Those with pending asylum applications have tried to keep a low profile. A representative for them declined to be interviewed for this article, hoping to avoid the political spotlight that Lake has been actively pursuing. But press-freedom organizations and former VOA directors are speaking up on behalf of these journalists, noting that several foreign reporters have been imprisoned abroad after working for U.S.-funded outlets.
'Protecting these journalists from the risk of deportation is a moral obligation and demonstrates a commitment to democratic values and a free press,' the Committee to Protect Journalists told me in a statement.
Last month, Lake shut down the J-1 visa program at VOA, attempting to cast it as a loophole through which foreign spies and other bad actors from 'hostile' nations have been allowed to enter the country. Critics have long suggested that the J-1 exchange program is inappropriate for professional journalists, who instead should be using the I-1 visa program, which is specifically for foreign media. Lake has offered little evidence to back up her espionage accusations, though opponents of the agency seized on news last year that an alleged Russian spy posing as a freelance journalist had reported for VOA. The man was based in Poland and was not on a J-1 visa.
Some supporters of VOA have agreed that changes and reforms were overdue at the broadcaster—including more effective vetting of employees—but few expected that it would so quickly be declared irredeemable.
Even Lake, who lost elections for Arizona governor and the U.S. Senate in 2022 and 2024, respectively, did not initially give any indication that she would try to shut down the agency she had been tapped to oversee.
'We are fighting an information war, and there's no better weapon than the truth, and I believe VOA could be that weapon,' she said in a February 21 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. 'Some people have suggested shutting it down. And with all the corruption, I totally get it, I do—all the corruption we're seeing. But I believe it's worth trying to save.'
Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media did not respond to my requests for comment.
VOA's ultimate fate is in the hands of judges who are weighing multiple lawsuits challenging Lake's authority to close the congressionally funded broadcaster. VOA's director, Michael Abramowitz, filed legal documents last week claiming Lake had illegally tried to oust him from his role. As those cases play out in court, hundreds of VOA journalists remain on paid administrative leave. Meanwhile, Lake has been appearing on other networks to portray J-1 visa holders as 'spies' who are inherently dangerous because some of them come from nations that are U.S. adversaries.
'That sort of rhetoric—it's utter nonsense,' Herman, a former White House bureau chief at VOA, told me. 'To perceive these people as a national-security threat is just ridiculous. In fact, it can be argued that those responsible for dismantling the Voice of America have harmed America's national security by taking away one of our most powerful instruments of public diplomacy and soft power.'
In a previous era, someone like Rio Tuaskil might be seen as evidence of the success of that kind of diplomacy.
Born in Indonesia, Tuaskil grew up watching a weekly VOA lifestyle show called Dunia Kita, an Indonesian analogue of CBS Sunday Morning that highlights American culture. The show and other VOA programming helped him see a more textured version of America than what was presented in Hollywood action films, he told me.
He said the Indonesian-born VOA journalist Patsy Widakuswara was his 'role model,' and that watching her on television inspired him to come to the States on a J-1 visa and work as a journalist. (Widakuswara, who later became a U.S. citizen and the broadcaster's White House bureau chief, is a lead plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging Lake. The case remains pending.)
Chris Feliciano Arnold: Naturalized citizens are scared
Tuaskil had been working as a reporter for VOA's Indonesian service in February when he was handed a letter similar to the one Mustafa would later receive. It did not dawn on him until after he was escorted from the building that the termination meant he would have to leave the country in a matter of weeks. He had been in the early stages of applying for a green card.
He spoke with an immigration lawyer to see what options he might have for staying. None of the prospects seemed very promising, he told me.
'She asked me, 'Do you have a possible good case for asylum?' And I said, 'Well, I'm gay, and homosexuality is criminalized in Indonesia,'' he told me, referring to the country's ban on same-sex marriage.
But ultimately, with only a few days to make the decision, he opted to return to Jakarta, figuring that attempting to stay in a country that had told him he was no longer 'mission critical' was not worth it.
Whereas VOA was once viewed as a diplomatic effort to cast the U.S. as a more appealing place in the eyes of foreigners, Lake's campaign against J-1 visa holders is part of a broader push that is having the opposite effect.
International tourism to the United States is down significantly this year, the number of foreign students planning to enroll at American universities this fall has dropped precipitously, and fear of arbitrary deportation has gripped longtime U.S. residents who lack legal documents.
The fact that journalists for VOA, who were invited to work for the U.S. government, have been caught up in Trump's deportation machine is likely to have a further chilling effect.
Mustafa, who told me he continues to be 'shocked' by how quickly his fortunes changed after agreeing to work at VOA, said he advises anyone coming to the U.S. to think short-term and 'have a backup plan.'
'I made the mistake of planning long-term,' he told me. 'I bought the furniture. I shouldn't have bought the furniture.'