The California Social Services Agency website had links to an anti-immigrant group.

For at least five years, the State of California has shared anti-immigrant group talk topics on a website designed to serve as a clearing house for refugees and other immigrants.

The Department of Human Services website has been linking to the Center for Immigration Research (CIS) since at least 2017, a year after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) called the CIS an anti-immigrant hate group.

The links on the website are intended to “provide information about California refugee programs, populations served, and organizations that partner with the California Department of Human Services – Refugee Program Bureau (RPB) – to provide benefits and services,” the web says. state website.

The CIS features white nationalist and anti-Semitic writers in its weekly newsletters and consistently publishes reports that “inflate immigrant crime,” said Caleb Kieffer, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Kieffer added that “they are one of the leading anti-immigrant think tanks in the country at the moment.”

One of the links took people to the CIS website, which featured articles on the topics: “Why Detention of Immigrants is Necessary”; “Why Alternative Programs Don’t Eliminate the Need to Detain Immigrants”; and “Cities of Refuge”.

Through another link from the CIS countries, visitors could read a newsletter about immigrants from Haiti in the United States.

CIS was founded in 1985 by John Tanton, “a Michigan ophthalmologist turned population control alarmist whose racist beliefs led him to form a network of organizations with the simple goal of sharply limiting immigration to the United States in order to maintain a white majority. ”, — reported on the website of the legal center.

Most recently, CIS partnered with Stephen Miller, an aide to former President Donald Trump who has promoted many of the administration’s anti-immigration measures.

Social services removed the links from their website on Monday, minutes after a request from KPBS News.

“These links are out of date and were posted in error,” wrote Scott Murray, Associate Director of Public Affairs and Outreach. Murray did not answer several additional questions, including when the links were first posted and how they ended up on the state’s website.

Internet Archive sites show CIS links on a social services site as early as 2017. It is unclear when they were originally posted.

CIS positions itself as an unbiased think tank by publishing newsletters and newsletters, Kieffer said, so he understands how social services could mistakenly list him as a resource.

“Thanks to them for removing them immediately and acknowledging the harmful nature of these links,” he said. “I understand that this can happen because that’s how they were made to work.”

However, Kieffer said it was “concerning” that they were shared in the first place.

“When we provide a platform for groups like the CIS, we kind of amplify this anti-immigrant, nativist and xenophobic rhetoric even more,” he said.

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