By Luis V. Gutiérrez
Editor’s Note:Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) spoke during the debate of Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s harsh anti-immigration bill, H.R. 4760 on June 21st on the floor of the House of Representatives. The following are his remarks as prepared for delivery.
The reelection strategy for every single Republican Member of the House is to stand strong with a President willing to take children from their parents in order to look mean and nasty when children are fleeing for their lives. You own that. That is your campaign strategy.
As of today, Republicans want to put the children in the same jails as the parents, and fight to hold them indefinitely and demand we charge asylum seekers with a crime and get rid of them.
The more than 2,300 children who have been taken from their parents and put in a vast system spread over thousands of miles – we just don’t know if those children will ever see their families again.
You own that too. That is what you are campaigning on to save your jobs.
At some point someone needs to stop complimenting the emperor on his new suit of clothes and start telling the President that he is naked. Covering Trump’s rear-end from all the lies, the deceit and the soullessness is no longer sustainable.
Taking DACA away from Dreamers, that is your policy too and then putting bills on the floor to cut legal immigration and build a wall are your strategies to blame Democrats for what you are doing.
Republicans want to be both the arsonists and the firefighters, and you can’t be both.
Speaker Ryan and Chairman Goodlatte are not bad people. They are both decent men of faith who have been put in the position of defending policies that are cruel, inhumane, and run deeply contrary to the will of the American people and the values of their faith and country.
This must be morally wrenching for them, but honestly, I have little sympathy. Each has made a devil’s bargain to trade their reputations for Stephen Miller’s agenda and Donald Trump’s name.
Legal immigration? No. An asylum policy that protects human lives? No. DACA to protect Dreamers? No. Policies that treat wife-beating and rape as matters that require us to protect women? No. Nation of immigrants? No, they want a wall.
Even though both are leaving office because the Republican Party is no longer a home for decent men and women of values, faith and conscience – both are leaving us with one last commitment to put the needs of this erratic President above the will of the people and above the good of the nation.
At some point someone needs to stop complimenting the emperor on his new suit of clothes and start telling the President that he is naked. Covering Trump’s rear-end from all the lies, the deceit and the soullessness is no longer sustainable.
Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez is the Dean of the Illinois delegation and a thirteen-term Member of Congress from Chicago. He is a Member of the Judiciary Committee and the Chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
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