How Trump can deport all migrant predators at National Zoo

A Komodo dragon named Onyx at the National Zoo in 2022. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) 

How Trump can deport all those migrant predators at the National Zoo

The Washington Post

April 1, 2025

By Dana Milbank

The National Zoo can easily be converted into a symbol of American Greatness.

Finally, President Donald Trump has issued an executive order we can all agree on.

He has signed one lawless order after another, most devoted to sabotaging the government and taking a chainsaw to the Constitution. But his latest order targeting the National Zoo is right on the mark.

The Thursday order gives Vice President JD Vance the authority to “remove improper ideology” from the “Smithsonian Institution and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.” (Emphasis added.) These subversive institutions will be converted into symbols of “American greatness” charged with “instilling pride in the hearts of all Americans.”

About time, I say. The zoo boasts prominently on its website that it has “more than 2,200 animals representing almost 400 different species.” Could there be a more brazen embrace of DEI? Searching the zoo’s website this weekend, I found 1,110 results for “diversity” — most of them treating it as a good thing, which it most certainly is not! “Study of Diversity Among Species Helps National Zoo Scientists Breed Endangered Species,” one page said. “Genetic diversity plays a major role in the overall health of a species,” another announced.

There are another 3,300 hits for “biodiversity,” a woke ideology the zoo is proudly spreading across the planet — and beyond. “Smithsonian Scientists Devise Method to Secure Earth’s Biodiversity on the Moon,” one article crowed.

Worse, the zoo is a 163-acre Sanctuary City operating in the heart of the nation’s capital. Not one of its 2,200 “residents” (as the zoo refers to them) is a citizen, a green card holder or even in possession of a student visa.

Many of these are cold-blooded killers — total animals, in fact. The zoo provides refuge to the “green anaconda” (a migrant from south of the border, ‘natch), which the zoo admits is an “opportunistic apex predator.” In addition, “some of the top predators on the planet live at the Great Cats exhibit,” migrants from Africa and Asia, predictably.

These superpredators are coddled at taxpayer expense. An entire department exists to provide them all with “the best clinical veterinary care” — a form of socialized medicine. The “Africa Trail” — packed with illegal migrants from “s---hole countries” — is being renovated with “roomier indoor animal stalls” and “radiant heated floors.” The zoo doesn’t even hide that it is “enriching” these migrants instead of taking care of America First. The zoo openly admits it tries to “give animals more choices,” and these freeloaders even get “training sessions.”

Craig Saffoe, a lion trainer at the National Zoo, carries a curious cub to the water for a swim test in 2010. (AJ Chavar/The Washington Post)

While we all know that there are only two genders, the zoo, showing flagrant disregard for this administration’s policies, promotes nonbinary expression. “Many corals ... are hermaphrodites,” it noted with approval, “which means they produce both male and female gametes.” Yet zoo scientists are encouraging this unnatural behavior through the zoo’s “coral conservation” program, which does not require these corals to use restrooms according to gender assigned at birth.

Enough is enough. I recommend that the Trump administration order that the following migrants at the zoo be rounded up by masked federal agents, thrown into unmarked vehicles and deported to a Salvadoran prison without a court hearing:

·       Chinese three-striped box turtle

·       Cuban crocodile

·       Iranian fat-tailed gecko (this nasty creature is known to “wrap its tail around a predator and defecate”)

·       Panamanian golden frog

·       Andean bear (from Venezuela)

·       African clawed frog

·       Asian water dragon

·       Persian onager (a.k.a. the Persian wild ass)

·       And, from South America, the screaming hairy armadillo

In addition, with immediate effect, the zoo will drain the swamp and detain the Chinese alligator, Philippine crocodile, Oriental fire-bellied toad, Asian small-clawed otter and Vietnamese mossy frog — all of which will be put on a military jet bound for Guantánamo Bay.

In place of these “residents,” the National Zoo will admit more migrants from Europe, such as the domestic pigeon and the Norway rat — and, from our new ally Russia, the Amur tiger. The zoo will also devote its remaining space to house domestic chickens, particularly high egg-producing breeds such as the Rhode Island Red, in service of the administration’s inflation-fighting agenda.

The Migratory Bird Center, which encourages an open-border policy contrary to the national interest of the United States, will be closed, as will the Center for Conservation Genomics, whose work on DNA probably causes autism.

Future “loans” of giant pandas from China will be hit with a 100 percent tariff.

The zoo’s participation in the globalist operation called “International Cat Day” will be discontinued.

The zoo’s two-toed sloths and sloth bears will be assigned work requirements if they wish to continue receiving government benefits.

In keeping with the administration’s promotion of white nationalism, grants will be canceled if they are found to be supporting non-White animals, including the red panda, red-bellied piranha, yellow-rumped warbler, black howler monkey, black-bellied whistling duck and collared brown lemur. Populations of these residents will be reduced by admitting American alligators to their exhibits.

By contrast, the zoo will be directed to increase asylum quotas for white-cheeked gibbons and for South African penguins, whose abdomens are almost entirely white and who face persecution in their homeland.

An annual Endangered Species Safari led by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump will reduce diversity on the zoo’s Africa and Asia trails. (The American Trail will be off-limits to the hunt.) Fishing will be permitted in the Amazonia exhibit.

In Greenland on Friday, Vance explained why the United States will take control of the Danish territory, regardless of what the locals think: “We cannot just ignore the president’s desires.”

And we know that the president does not desire animals. He is the first president not to have a dog in the White House in more than 100 years. He refers to migrants as “animals” who “breed” and people he doesn’t like — particularly women — as “dogs.” The only time he seems to care about animals is when he makes up stories about them being abused by migrants: “They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.”

Therein lies the final recommendation for returning “American greatness” to the zoo. If radical left lunatic judges on rigged courts block the deportation of the zoo’s alien residents, the public will be invited to the zoo to celebrate the end of diversity — with an all-species barbecue.

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress and campaigns – along with occasional essays about his misadventures in nature. He is a New York Times bestselling author and has written five books on politics, most recently “Fools on the Hill.” follow on X@Milbank

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