Rep. Steve King (R-IA) stood by incendiary remarks he made last week in an interview about DREAMers–where he was quoted as saying that for every valedictorian DREAMer, there are 100 more who are carrying drugs across the border–despite near universal condemnation from Democrats and his Republican colleagues.
“It seems as though I have a few critics out there, but those who have been advocating for the DREAM Act have been trying to make it about valedictorians,” King said on Radio Iowa Tuesday. “I don’t disagree that there are DREAMers that are valedictorians, but it also would legalize those that are smuggling drugs into the United States.”
“I made a comment in an interview last week….to Newsmax…and I said: ‘For every valedictorian, you have a hundred 130-pound drug smugglers with calves the size of cantaloupes.’ And that comes from being down on the border, spending days and nights down there in multiple trips and time with the Border Patrol…That description essentially came from them,” the congressman continued.
“It’s not something that I’m making up. This is real,” he added. “We have people that are mules, that are drug mules, that are hauling drugs across the border and you can tell by their physical characteristics what they’ve been doing for months, going through the desert with 75 pounds of drugs on their back and if those who advocate for the DREAM Act, if they choose to characterize this about valedictorians, I gave them a different image that we need to be thinking about because we just simply can’t be passing legislation looking only at one component of what would be millions of people.”
