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Cozing Up to the Anti-Immigrant Forces
Friends and allies of the GOP
BY R AUL A. R EYES
When I was grow-
ing up, my older
Mexican-American
relatives had an ex-
pression: “Tell me
who your friends
are, and I’ll tell you
who you are.”
It was my family’s way of making
me careful about choosing my
friends.
Even then, I could see they were
right. The smart kids mostly hung
out with other smart kids. The ath-
letes stuck with other athletes. The
troublemakers befriended other
troublemakers.
That saying comes to mind when
I think about the Iowa Freedom
Summit, a big gathering in Des
Moines that basically launched the
2016 Republican primary. Many
potential GOP presidential candi-
dates journeyed to the Hawkeye
State to give speeches and shake
hands.
What could be wrong with that?
For starters, the man behind it:
Rep. Steve King. He’s one of the
nation’s most divisive immigration
hardliners. It was a mistake for so
many potential GOP candidates to
associate with him.
King made headlines last
January, when President
Barack Obama delivered his
latest State of the Union ad-
dress. In a tweet about the
speech, King called a young
undocumented woman who
was brought to this country as a
child “a deportable.”
Ana Zamora, the college student
he insulted, had benefited from
Obama’s Deferred Action for Child-
hood Arrivals program, or DACA.
Zamora was also one of First Lady
Michelle Obama’s guests.
Thanks to DACA, the govern-
ment can’t deport Zamora. But
King’s slur highlighted his
longstanding hostility toward im-
migrants.
In 2013, for example, he explained
his opposition to the DREAM Act
— a bill that would have given cer-
tain young undocumented immi-
grants the right to live and work
without fear of deportation — by
likening them to drug smugglers.
“For every one who’s a valedic-
torian,” King told the conservative
news site Newsmax, “there’s an-
other 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.”
He’s also compared undocu-
mented immigrants to dogs.
Despite King’s bile, plenty of
potential GOP candidates took part
in his summit. Chris Christie, Rick
Perry, Mike Huckabee, Rick
Santorum, Ted Cruz, and Ben
Carson all showed up.
That they would associate with a
lawmaker who makes such offen-
sive remarks raises legitimate ques-
tions about their judgment and
whether they’re presidential mate-
rial.
By largely letting hardliners like
King dictate its immigration policy,
the GOP alienates Latino voters. It
makes the Republican Party long on
ugly rhetoric and short on real solu-
tions.
King has become so toxic that
some Iowans are now lamenting his
prominence in the GOP.
They’re worried that King could
diminish Iowa’s first-in-the-nation
caucuses if he continues to be such
a die-hard opponent of immigration
reform, as Matt Hildreth warned in a
recent Des Moines Register op-ed.
Most Americans support reform.
In fact, a 2013 poll showed that most
voters in King’s own district favor
it, including a pathway to citizen-
ship for undocumented people like
Zamora.
To be fair, not every potential
GOP presidential candidate at-
tended the Iowa Freedom Summit.
Marco Rubio and Rand Paul passed.
But hold your applause.
They missed King’s event be-
cause they were in California meet-
ing in private with the billionaire
Koch brothers — who just an-
nounced that their network of do-
nors plans to spend a record $889
million on the 2016 election cycle.
That staggering amount more than
doubles what the Republican Na-
tional Committee spent in 2012.
Ted Cruz actually made it to both
the Iowa Freedom Summit and the
Koch brothers’ event.
So there you have it. The next
crop of Republican presidential
hopefuls is either allied with anti-
immigration extremists or at the beck
and call of the richest 0.1 percent of
Americans.
Or in Cruz’s case, both.
With friends like Steve King and
the Koch brothers, Republicans
need no help proving that they’re
anti-immigrant, elitist, and out of
sync with American values.
Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and
columnist based in New York City.