Darrel Issa’s a pig. He’s a Republican congressman from California who recently launched a campaign to repeal DACA which allows many undocumented youth a degree of protection from deportation. Calling kids criminals — you don’t get any more reactionary than that.
So when my friend spotted him in the airport I had to say something. One friend, a DREAMer, went up to him as he waited to board the plane and told him that Issa’s policies threatened to separate his family. Issa grumbled something about how his family had broken the law and had the nerve to call the U.S. immigration policy “generous.”
Generous?! Not as “generous” as the millions of immigrant workers who work for substandard wages and conditions, doing all the work that makes the lives of people like Issa so comfortable. Immigrant labor has generated billions for the agricultural interests, the owners of restaurants, hotels, and factories — probably the same people who donate to Issa’s campaigns. Generous indeed!
We were flying from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas where many undocumented immigrant workers live in some of the worst poverty in the country, without electricity, running water, and access to health care. That’s not a life that Issa would ever know about, but these are the people he calls criminals.
Issa clearly didn’t want to talk to us and scurried onto the plane as soon as he could. Unfortunately for him, there was no first class section for him to hide in. So after I put my bag down, I went over to his seat and told him, “You should be ashamed of yourself for splitting up families.” He wouldn’t look up.
Issa’s quite the chest thumping militant when he’s in front of the Fox News cameras or sitting in his air conditioned, isolated, congressional hearings. Not so much when he’s by himself personally facing the people whose lives he’s affecting. When we were waiting for our bags after the flight, he tried his best to stay away from us asking the crew if he could wait outside to get his bag. Sorry, Mr. Congressman, you’re stuck with us! He looked very anxious.
Of course, I have no illusions that he will feel any shame. Or that he will change his policies whatsoever on account of us or any other immigrant families. He is who he is.
But it felt good, even necessary to make these bigots face us. They commit crimes against working people and then get to strut around among their supporters or invisible to the people they are hurting. Like all bullies, they thrive on intimidation but cower when challenged.
Lupillo Rivera bravely stood up to the racist mob in Murrieta, California which had surrounded a bus of immigrant children. That sort of mob is stimulated by the more “refined” racists in Congress and in local governments. Let’s do like Lupillo Rivera and stand up to all of them.
