Dozens of immigrant rights activists from Virginia’s CASA in Action and 27 other states flooded the offices of 55 House Republicans yesterday, demanding that the GOP allow a clean vote on the bipartisan DREAM Act, which would finally put undocumented youth on a path to citizenship. While some Republicans appeared to engage immigrant youth during the unannounced visits—“Rep. Scott W. Taylor, a freshman Republican from Virginia Beach and a former Navy SEAL, greeted them warmly in Spanish”—others, like Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, fled:
They had no luck meeting with Comstock in her office but happened to spot her later in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building. She saw them coming and got into an elevator.
Sookyung Oh, an advocate for Korean and Asian American communities in Virginia, stepped inside with her, and the doors nearly shut before Luis Angel Aguilar, an advocacy and elections specialist with CASA, joined them.
Exasperated, Comstock walked past them back into the hall, saying to no one in particular, “Is this not a members-only elevator?”
It wasn’t, but the one next to it was, so she went inside, followed by Jerry Foltz, pastor emeritus of Wellspring United Church of Christ in Centreville.
He said later that he tried to talk to her about the Dream Act but got the feeling after a few seconds that she didn’t want him there.
“I don’t think it was much of a conversation,” Foltz said about Comstock, who is running for re-election “in a potentially competitive” district and has refused to hold in-person town halls or large public gatherings, according to constituents. “Any more would be really aggravating to her.” What’s also really aggravating is congressional Republicans refusing to heed the nearly 90 percent of American voters who want Congress to pass a bill allowing undocumented immigrant youth to stay in the only country they’ve ever known as home.
House Democrats have been united in support of the bipartisan DREAM Act, and nearly all have signed a discharge petition to bypass Speaker Paul Ryan’s inaction to get a bill onto the floor for a vote. But it’s Republicans who control Congress, and while many said kind words about immigrant youth when Donald Trump heartlessly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, kind words won’t protect youth from his immoral, mass deportation force. They need Republicans to act:
Earlier in the afternoon, the group showed up at Taylor’s office. He said he was heading to a military briefing but would walk with them to the end of the hall.
Then he stopped, turned around and faced them while cameras clicked.
“My party,” he said, “we’re in control — I think we should lead on this issue.”
He said he wrote a letter to the administration opposing a looming Oct. 5 deadline for dreamers’ DACA renewal applications, which he called “crazy.”
He traded small talk with them in Spanish and was off.
It was a little better than the reception the activists got from another Virginian, Congressman Rob Wittman. Like Comstock, Wittman “slipped out of his office when they arrived and sprinted down a flight of stairs, outpacing those who ran after him,” but did decide to bypass Comstock’s private elevator:
As soon as they entered, the lawmaker grabbed a folder from a staffer and walked past them. A race walk turned into a sprint as he bypassed elevators and took the stairs. The four protesters, out of breath, gave up.
“We asked for 10 seconds,” Aguilar said. “That was disrespectful because we have constituents from his district right here.”
CASA in Action notes that Comstock has tweeted about attending “cultural celebrations important to immigrants,” but was also “captured on video refusing a mother’s plea for her to take a position on the DREAM Act.”
“Rep. Comstock and Republican candidates Ed Gillespie, Jill Vogel and John Adams have chosen to criminalize our community by proposing racist legislation or releasing racist ads. Shame on them,” said Luis Aguilar, a DACA recipient with CASA in Action. “We are in Capitol Hill today and will be mobilizing Virginian voters on November 7 to elect leaders who want to build a stronger and inclusive Virginia. We are the new Virginia and we will hold you accountable.”