Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) is blasting President Trump’s new immigration proposals, calling them an “extension of the white supremacist agenda.”
“I warned Democrats not to negotiate, to say that what we wanted was a clean Dream Act,” Gutiérrez said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“It’s a slippery slope — I never understood why everybody wanted to sit down and negotiate.”
Gutiérrez said no new ground has been broken in negotiations for the past 20 years.
“They’re throwing everything and the kitchen sink in terms of enforcement. I just never understood it,” he said.
He added that Trump “has never wavered from his xenophobic positions.”
“I never understood — I just never got it, how you go from Charlottesville and white supremacists to reaching an agreement with him,” he added.
“It’s an extension of the white supremacist agenda — what they want to do is criminalize and delegitimize Latinos.”
The White House on Sunday said it would seek more funds from Congress to finance building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as more resources to hire thousands more immigration officers.
The new demands would have to be met for Trump to agree to legislation that would protect from deportation young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children. These recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program have been the focal point of recent talks between Trump and Democratic leaders of Congress.
Top congressional Democrats quickly ripped the Trump administration’s immigration proposals, warning they fall short of a potential deal to help DACA recipients.