Rep. Marsha Blackburn appeared on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch,” yesterday to discuss the far-right GOP immigration bill recently approved by the House, which included a provision to gut the program that gives temporarily relief to Dreamers.
Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, badly misrepresented the DACA program by alleging that it treats Mexican and non-Mexican immigrants differently by giving the latter a legal reprieve, which she says encouraged the migration of unaccompanied minors from Central America.
However, DACA does not treat people from Central American and Mexico differently. That would be the 2008 Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was passed unanimously by Congress (while Blackburn was serving) and signed into law by George W. Bush.
Blackburn also praised the House GOP for taking up their draconian bill, which she said will “stem the tide” of migration by intimidating the cartels involved in human trafficking: “We know that the cartels and the transnational criminal groups watch very closely what happens and for them to see that vote in the House where we vote to pull that program back in, to stop it and to take that executive authority away from the president’s hands and to bring it back to Congress where it belongs, that sends a message.”
