DREAM Act Portal Forum - Republican congressman celebrates first dreamer deportation with a beer

Whatever protection Barack Obama granted to young, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is now looking a lot less secure. While Donald Trump never came down definitively on one side or the other, alternatively promising to repeal Obama’s immigration executive actions (which would include DACA) and insisting that whatever “very firm” course he pursues, “it’s going to be a lot of heart” [sic] and “they’re going to end up being very happy.”

That apparently does not include Juan Manuel Montes, a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant who was recently deported to Mexico after he was stopped by authorities and could not immediately provide proof of his protected status. “I thought that if I kept my nose clean nothing would happen,” Montes, who says he renewed his DREAMer status through 2018, told USA Today. He is currently living in western Mexico with his extended family after trying and failing to cross back into the U.S.

It’s not clear whether Montes’s case is the result of a bureaucratic error or the expanded immigration crackdown currently underway. According to the Department of Homeland Security, his DACA status was expired and he had a prior conviction for shoplifting. On Tuesday, Montes sued the Trump administration, disputing the government’s account and seeking information about why he was deported.

Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, however, didn’t wait before celebrating the young man’s deportation to Mexico. “First non-valedictorian DREAMer deported,” he tweeted, posting a photo of a dark, foamy pint of beer. “Border Patrol, this one’s for you.”

Steve King
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@SteveKingIA
First non-valedictorian DREAMer deported. Border Patrol, this one's for you. http://usat.ly/2pyZriQ

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5:42 PM - Apr 18, 2017
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King’s comment was widely condemned as insensitive at best. But it was not surprising, considering the Iowa congressman’s long history of xenophobic, even racist statements about immigration. Last summer, he raged against demographic changes to the U.S., arguing during a live TV segment that white people contributed more to civilization than any other categories or “subgroup of people.” Last month, he tweeted an explicitly white nationalist message urging Americans not to “restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” (King doubled down in a follow-up interview with CNN, telling host Chris Cuomo that the “push to bring in much illegal immigration into America” is designed to “replace the void” created by abortion, and warned that many are “living in enclaves, refusing to assimilate into the American culture and civilization.”)

King was also one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders during the presidential campaign, enthusiastically endorsing his hardline, extremist rhetoric on immigration, including Trump’s infamous comments calling Mexicans “rapists” and drug dealers. Still, King has gone even further than Trump on DACA, which the Department of Homeland Security has said it is leaving in place (some immigration advocates dispute this). “The reason they're called ‘Dreamers’ because that’s the most sympathetic term that could be apply applied to people,” he told CNN, last year, arguing that even migrants under the age of 10 should be subjected to the law. “They know what they're doing, it's not against their will. And they came here to live in the shadows. So, if we enforce the law and they live in the shadows, that's what they came here to do.”

He also said he hopes to keep Trump’s feet to the fire. “I don't want to let this go because somebody's heart got a little softer than it was before the election,” King added.

With Trump’s recent policy reversals on everything from Syria to Russia, and China to NATO, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to change his stance on DREAMers, too. “Listen, the President made a clear pledge [to repeal DACA]. This was actually going to be first day,” King told the Larry O’Connor Show in February, grousing that Trump should have signed an executive order upon assuming the presidency. “Knock it out and let's get on with life.”