The presence of DREAMers - undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children - at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration on Thursday raised hackles with Iowa Republican Representative Steve King. King, who opposes the immigration reform bill crafted by the Senate "Gang of Eight" for providing what he believes is amnesty for some 11 million people in the United States without documentation, wrote on Twitter, "#Immigration: Illegal aliens in House Judiciary Committee room during hearing today. How can we secure border if we can't secure our room?"
King has frequently made the news for comments on immigration law and undocumented immigrants which many have perceived as inflammatory. In a 2012 interview on FOX News, he rejected an interviewer's suggestion that DREAMers brought here as children were free of blame, saying that there were thousands of teenage immigrants who come to the United States of their own volition, adding that "many of them are carrying drugs across the border at a young age". Watch the interview below.
ABC reporter Ted Hesson asked King later on Thursday if the head of a union for federal immigration agents should have deported the DREAMers present.
"Even if he has someone that he knows is here illegally and they're in jail, he can't deport them," King responded.
King believes that the bill would undermine "the underpinnings of the pillars of American exceptionalism". On a recent appearance on The Steve Deace Show, he said of the bill, "it's wrong economically, it's wrong culturally" and indicated that President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party were using the bill to "create a monolithic voting bloc out of Hispanics that is similar to that bloc that they have created out of African Americans".
Julieta Garibay, founder of United We Dream, an advocacy group representing immigrant youth, responded on Twitter, "Yes @stevekingia undocumented immigrants were present at #HJC hearing & we will continue to be..."
The bill has just made it through a series of amendments in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will go to the Senate floor for a vote in June. It is expected to pass by a wide margin in the Senate, but what will happen when it reaches the House of Representatives remains to be seen. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, released a statement yesterday saying the House would not pass the Senate's bill.
"The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes," the statement said.
"The House will work its will and produce its own legislation," it said.
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