GOP Congressman Asks Police to Arrest Undocumented Immigrants Attending the State of the Union
If you were still under any pretense that Republicans want to pass any sort of protections for DACA recipients, look no further than the comments of Representative Paul Gosar, DDS:
Some context: Many Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin, and Kamala Harris, are planning to bring DACA recipients as their guests to Tuesday night’s State of the Union. Others have invited immigrants who recently had family members deported. (As my colleague Jorge Rivas points out, in their choice of guests, many of the Democrats are still choosing to highlight the pernicious“good immigrant” myth.)
Gosar, an Arizona congressman who, judging by his Twitter name and his web site, really wants you to know that he has his dentistry degree, is retaliating by urging the Capitol Police and Jeff Sessions to check attendees’ documents and arrest them on the spot. It’s a page taken directly from Fox News’s Todd Starnes, who argued this weekend that “If Pelosi brings ‘Dreamers’ to the State of the Union, Trump should bring ICE agents.”
As Vox’s Dara Lind points out, DACA recipients don’t have “fraudulent social security numbers and identification.”
The main point of Gosar’s comments is to terrorize. This is pretty much as despicable as it gets. But it’s not any different from the reality that undocumented immigrants face every day. This, after all, is the state of our union.