Steve King held another town hall event in New Hampton, Iowa today, where he took a question from a DREAMer constituent — and then promptly shut her down.
Monica Reyes, a resident of New Hampton, Iowa — part of King’s district — organized and turned out 20 people to King’s town hall today. When King called on her during a question and answer session, she began telling him the story of how she came to the US when she was three years old in order to flee an abusive father. DACA — the program that King has tried to hard to kill — has allowed her to pay her way through school and even buy a house.
“Do you think that DACA should be taken away from me and other [DREAMers]?” Monica asked.
Instead of answering her question, King interrupted her twice. Halfway through her question, he said:
Can I ask you to bring this to a conclusion? I just looked at my watch, and I’m going to get pulled out of here in just a few minutes…but I want you to get your point made, because you’re in a public meeting and you need an opportunity to be able to do that.
But as she asked her question, his only response was, “No, I’m going to respond to you now. You’re done. I asked you politely to stop. We’re going to go to another question.”
View video of the encounter here, courtesy of American Bridge:
After the event, Monica released a statement on how dismissed she had felt by King:
I grew up in New Hampton, Iowa and immigration is really important to our community. For us, it’s not about politics, it’s about families.
We had over 20 people attend the town hall today to tell Steve King that we support immigration reform. In fact, we had more people at the event than Steve King did. However, Steve King completely disregarded me as a human being at today’s meeting. He barely let me speak and he did not answer a single question of mine.
DACA is really important to Iowa. There are over 4,500 Iowans like me that can benefit from DACA. Steve King is trying to take it away without even having a conversation about it. He needs to compromise and stop blaming the influx of central American minors into the United States on DACA. He needs to have an open mind and listen to what other people have to say (especially immigrants that have a better insight). I stood up to him, and he showed what a tyrant he can be. Do we really want to let such a man represent Iowa?
DREAMers in Iowa have been attending a string of Steve King’s public events, asking why he wants to kill DACA, the program that has allowed many of them to pursue their dreams. An event yesterday in Ames, Iowa caught King once again spreading dubious claims about anchor babies and birth tourism. Another encounter between King, Rand Paul, Erika Andiola, and Cesar Vargas went viral earlier this month when Erika asked King to rip up her DACA card.
