Illinois Democratic lawmaker Luis Gutierrez declared Republicans’ main fight in Congress over a stalled border bill is “how do [they] get meaner, how do [they] get nastier with immigrants.”
Gutierrez appeared on MSNBC’s “Jose Diaz-Balart” on Friday to blast the GOP’s disarray on immigration reform. The congressman took particular umbrage at the fact that Diaz-Balart’s previous guest, Tennessee Republican lawmaker Marsha Blackburn, referred to the tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children on the border as “unaccompanied alien children.”
“She says, ‘UACs, UACs, UACs,’ I think she said it three or four times,” he said. “Why doesn’t she just say ‘children?’ . . . That is really the problem that the Republican Party has.”
Gutierrez blasted Blackburn’s proposal to defund President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) plan, adding that “that might have been rewritten by Senator Cruz, who might’ve took the pen and said, ‘No Marsha, that’s not strong enough and not mean enough.'”
“So I think the real, fundamental problem that the Republicans have is, ‘How do we get meaner, how do we get nastier with immigrants, so that we can take a smaller group,’ now apparently led by Senator Cruz — I mean, maybe he’s gonna be the next Speaker of the House,” Gutierrez continued. “Because it’s quite clear that Mr. Boehner has no control over this conference.”
The Illinois congressman finally got to his tortured point towards the end of the interview. “There are dozens of Republicans members who would vote with us,” he asserted. “But apparently their voices are being shut out by people who are just louder and meaner in their conference. And that’s where they’re moving.”
“So where are they moving today?” he concluded. “They’re going to move to be meaner to immigrants in order to bring their conference together.”