[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11652]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             DEFENDING DACA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Gutierrez) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, this past Saturday, I was a guest at 
Lincoln United Methodist Church in Chicago, where we had an emergency 
meeting to discuss how we would defend the DACA--Deferred Action for 
Childhood Arrivals--initiative started 5 years ago.
  DACA has allowed nearly 800,000 DREAMers--immigrants who were brought 
to the U.S. as children and who grew up here--to work and live here if 
they meet certain requirements, go through a background check, and 
renew their application periodically.
  Now, Republicans, led by the Governor of Texas, are planning to sue 
the President if he doesn't rescind DACA. And given this President and 
his opinion of Mexicans, Latinos, and immigrants, we are not expecting 
the President to put up much of a fight.
  So for a few weeks now, I have been telling people to prepare for the 
end of DACA, maybe as soon as September. You can watch the speech on 
Facebook or YouTube. A lot of Trump supporters got angry about what I 
said on Saturday. They didn't even take the time to watch or listen to 
my speech, no. They got fired up by Breitbart, the only publication I 
can count on to cover everything I say.
  Breitbart said I was unhinged and said in the headline that I said it 
is time to eliminate Trump and bring him to his knees. The Washington 
Times didn't watch the speech but saw Breitbart's fair and balanced 
coverage and said I threatened Trump with physical violence.
  FOX News then echoed the idea that evening, saying I was threatening 
violence and would bring our violent movement to every neighborhood in 
America. So by the time you got to The Daily Stormer--that whipped 
cream on top of the White Nationalists/Neo-Nazi banana split--they 
cited the FOX News story and read the headline, ``Subversive Beanman 
Luis Gutierrez Calls for Trump's Elimination.''
  If FOX, Breitbart, and Daily Stormer report something, it has got to 
be true, I thought. So I went back to the video to see if I had 
threatened to assassinate the President.
  And you know what? I didn't. Here is what I said this past Saturday: 
``I am going to make sure that I am there, to make sure of one thing, 
that we write those articles of impeachment and take the Trump 
administration to trial before the Senate and eliminate him as 
President of the United States. He cannot fire Comey, threaten to fire 
Mueller, and say `I am the king,' `I am a dictator.' ''
  This is the quote, and I clearly am talking about the impeachment 
process, which I believe to be nonviolent. I mean, former President 
Bill Clinton went through it, and he is still alive. In fact, in 
shorthand, I am saying we should go through regular order.
  And that is nothing new for me. I have stood on this floor and called 
on the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to begin the process of 
hearings and witnesses, just as the Senate Judiciary Committee is 
doing, because that is our job.
  Just a moment. Later in the speech, I said: ``This is a democracy, 
and we will make democracy work. We will make it work for everyone, 
whether you are gay, straight, Brown, White, documented or 
undocumented, we are going to make sure democracy works for you . . .'' 
Meaning the people packed in the church that day, and really everyone 
else.
  I continued saying: ``And we are starting here this afternoon at this 
marvelous church in Chicago. Get ready. Our movement is coming 
somewhere in your neighborhood.''
  So what Breitbart imagined as an incitement to violence was really a 
call to action for people to get involved in their democracy, which, 
last time I looked, is still a form of government we aspire to in this 
country, and it is still nonviolent.
  But my favorite part of the Breitbart headline and the whole 
bloodthirsty Brown people motif that drove the coverage from Breitbart 
to FOX to Daily Stormer is that I said I wanted to bring President 
Trump to his knees.
  But what I actually said was, Gandhi, by employing the techniques and 
practices of nonviolent resistance, brought the British Empire to its 
knees. Which is actually true, and we should learn from his example.
  Indeed, Dr. King, a disciple of Gandhi, applied those strategies to 
the American civil rights movement to great success. And were it not 
for Dr. King and the other heroes who laid down their lives during the 
civil rights movement, I would not be standing here before you, and we 
wouldn't even be standing up or talking about The Daily Stormer, 
Breitbart, or Trump in defending immigrants and other vulnerable 
communities.
  So we owe the civil rights movement a great debt. I want to follow in 
those footsteps.
  So I read the headlines in Breitbart and I went back to look at what 
I actually said. You know what? I stand by it and I won't back down.

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