A Democratic congressman from the South is in hot water after claiming he did not defend migrants getting deported, ‘because I’m not a Latino at the Home Depot.’
‘First, they came for the Latinos outside of the Home Depots trying to get work so that they could feed their families,’ Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said during a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
‘I didn’t say anything about it, because I’m not a Latino at the Home Depot,’ the Democrat continued.
The lawmaker appears to have been making his own version of a poem by a Martin Niemöller.
The work, titled ‘First They Came,’ talks about how officials in Nazi Germany began persecuting communists, socialists and Jews, before the eventually ending with chilling phrase ‘Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.’
Johnson clearly sought to connect President Donald Trump’s approach to deportation to being akin to Nazi atrocities.
‘Then they came for the Hispanic looking folks wearing hats backwards with tattoos, and they deported them to El Salvador,’ Johnson recited.
‘I didn’t say anything about that because I don’t wear my hair backward, and I don’t have any tattoos, and I don’t look like a Latino,’ he added.
Rep. Hank Johnson was ripped online after coming up with a poem talking about how President Donald Trump is deporting ‘Latinos outside of Home Depot’ during a congressional hearing
Johnson at one point seemed to refer to Trump’s controversial deportation of Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was booted from the U.S. due to law enforcement getting intelligence indicating he is in the gang MS-13
On X users slammed Johnson for the ‘grotesque display.’
‘There is obvious absurd humor in this grotesque display,’ Jared Culver, a legal analyst for the Immigration Accountability Project wrote.
‘Don’t let it distract from the common Congress apologia for cheap labor servitude by foreign workersm’ he continued. ‘They casually justify it.’
‘Man…..that’s hard to watch,’ another X user, Brian Hastings, commented.
‘I’m sure he thought it would be dramatic and cool. But he seemed to realize, about half way through, that he looked like a complete idiot, taking eloquent, historically meaningful words, and making them meaningless.’
Another wrote: ‘They are trying to draw a parallel with the Holocaust. Despicable.’
Johnson went on and also alluded to the White House targeting Latinas and children, a nod to recent reports that indicate the administration deported mothers who had children born in the U.S. along with their American kids.
One of the kids was reportedly receiving treatment for cancer before leaving the country.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., is arrested with activists from Black Voters Matter during protest to support voting rights outside of Hart Building on Thursday, July 22, 2021
Abrego Garcia, and many other migrants, have been deported by Trump to CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador, which is pictured above
Border Czar Tom Homan, however, has said the mothers opted to be deported with their children as opposed to leaving the youngsters in the U.S.
‘Then they came for the Latinas at home taking care of the children. Scooped up the Latinas and the children, some of whom were American citizens, one of whom was receiving treatment for cancer,’ Johnson said.
‘They swept them up, took them off, and deported them, and I didn’t say anything about it, because I’m not a Latina, I’m not a little child who’s American, who’s an American citizen.’
Johnson’s poem continued for about three minutes in total.
He also noted how the Republican has gone after students on visas and recently arrested a ‘white’ judge for aiding an illegal immigrant.
‘They came and arrested a white female judge, a state court judge, presiding over her courtroom and the litigants therein, managing the affairs of her court, and they came and arrested her, and perp walked her to jail,’ Johnson’s poem concluded.