Yesterday morning we made our case for deporting Iowa congressman Steve King.
You know, because he said the following when talking about DREAMers and a path to citizenship: “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act.”
Today, our recommendation hasn’t changed. This is what King told an Iowa radio station yesterday:
It seems as though I have a few critics out there, but those who have been advocating for the DREAM Act have been trying to make it about valedictorians…I don’t disagree that there are DREAMers that are valedictorians, but it also would legalize those that are smuggling drugs into the United States. I made a comment in an interview last week….to Newsmax…and I said: ‘For every valedictorian, you have a hundred 130-pound drug smugglers with calves the size of cantaloupes.’ And that comes from being down on the border, spending days and nights down there in multiple trips and time with the Border Patrol…That description essentially came from them.
…It’s not something that I’m making up. This is real. We have people that are mules, that are drug mules, that are hauling drugs across the border and you can tell by their physical characteristics what they’ve been doing for months, going through the desert with 75 pounds of drugs on their back and if those who advocate for the DREAM Act, if they choose to characterize this about valedictorians, I gave them a different image that we need to be thinking about because we just simply can’t be passing legislation looking only at one component of what would be millions of people.
You can catch the entire audio here.
Meanwhile, reaction to King’s remarks has been pretty strong, although this one Twitter profile said it best by sharing a screen grab from a story discussing King:
It's about time! .@SteveKingIA .@SpeakerBoehner .@replouiegohmert .@CafeConLecheGOP .@latinorebels #latism #cir pic.twitter.com/goyWQumx8p
— Susan Pai (@susanpai) July 24, 2013
We sure hope so.